Pretend it's the 90s - Take the 14-day Smartphone Challenge and Change your Habits for the Better

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Smartphones are capable of so many great things. They're mobile computing powerhouses that put the collective knowledge of our species at our fingertips, connect us to friends, family, and strangers from all over the world, and give us the ability to create or consume all sorts of content, wherever we are, whenever it strikes us.

Here's the rub; for all that smartphones can do, their main role in our lives is likely as time-wasters and shallow distractions. Time that would otherwise be spent working toward a goal, making the most of free time with a fulfilling hobby, or just connecting with the other people in the room, is wasted mindlessly scrolling through feeds and doing nothing much at all.

After 20 minutes looking at picture after picture on Instagram, or an hour of scrolling through relatively meaningless content on Reddit, do you feel satisfied? Do you feel like like you've spent your time doing something enjoyable or worthwhile? Are you glad that you spent that time the way that you did, or do you wish you could get it back and do something else instead?

Take the 90s challenge; whatever distracts you now, be it social media, "just 1 more" YouTube video, the latest purposefully-addictive mobile game, whatever it is. Make a conscious effort to take back control of your time and of your life.

Pretend it’s the 90s. We wouldn’t sit there scrolling for 15 minutes out of every hour. We’d do whatever we wanted to do, and move on to the next thing. Yes, if we had smartphones back then, we’d have gotten distracted too, but we didn’t. It was a simpler time, but better in some ways. Bring some simplicity back into your life with the 14-day 90s challenge.

This isn’t another “smartphones bad”. We’re just acknowledging that smartphones have the power to distract us from what we want to spend our time doing, and working to be more aware of how we spend our time. If you need to use your smartphone all day, do it by all means, but make sure you’re actually doing something useful, not just wasting time looking at pictures.

The Rules

  • Don’t stare at your smartphone first thing in the morning. Get up as soon as you wake up, like many of us used to, and leave the phone on the bedside table.

  • Don’t spend 15 minutes scrolling through social media between (or during) every activity. Keep focused on your current activity and move on to the next one when its done.

  • Don’t take your smartphone into the bathroom with you. Finish your business and get out of there.

  • Use your smartphone with purpose to do what you need to do, and then put it down. Don't open Facebook or Instagram for a "quick look" - it never is.

  • Allocate a set hour of “time wasting” time, where you just scroll through social media or whatever. When the hour is over; stop and move on.

  • If you need to post something to social media, post it and move on. Don’t spend “just a few minutes” scrolling through your feed.

  • If you use your smartphone for a specific purpose (like reading books or gaming), then stay on that activity. Don’t switch between it and social media every 5 minutes.

Remeber, it isn’t about not using your phone. It’s about being conscious of how you spend your time, and not letting it waste away. Phones aren’t bad, but they can be distracting. Make sure it serves you, and not the other way around.