5 Things I Did To Fix My Phone Addiction: Reclaim Your Attention & Rebalance Your Dopamine

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[00:00:00] Liz: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody Podcast, where every week we’re sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and longtime journalist. Let’s dive in. One super quick note, I know that 50 percent of you listening to this episode do not follow the podcast.

[00:00:22] Take a second now to hit that follow or subscribe button. It is podcast. And it makes sure that episodes show up right in your feed. Go ahead. Do it right now. I’ll wait. Trust me, you do not want to miss out on any of our upcoming shows. They are jam packed with science and stories that will change your life.

[00:00:41] Alright, let’s get right into the episode. Today, we are going to be talking about phone addiction, one of the most highly requested topics that you guys sent in. I am going to share the five things that I think help the most with phone addiction and the science behind why these work and how we are getting our brains back.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] First of all, I want to dive into the detrimental impacts our phones are having, because we need to be clear on the problem before we can really identify solutions for it. I actually think that this is where a lot of the how to stay off your phone advice falls down because it’s just generally like, oh, you know, phones are bad.

[00:01:17] Stay off of them versus figuring out the true root negative impacts that phones are having on our lives, which is going to help us identify more specific solutions. And it’s going to give us way more motivation. So the first negative impact that phones are having on our life is that they have robbed us of our ability to pay attention.

[00:01:38] Phones are designed to provide constant and unpredictable rewards. They are literally designed like slot machines where you can pull the lever and you don’t know what you’re going to get, but sometimes you get the three cherries and the buzzers go off and all of this money pours out. That is what phones are doing to us.

[00:01:55] But the three cherries are an Instagram notification, they’re a text, they’re an [00:02:00] email, and we are checking and checking and checking, and usually it is not there. But occasionally it is, and occasionally when it is there, it really, really hits. And that creates truly one of the most addictive cocktails for our neurochemistry.

[00:02:15] I want to be clear. Phones are designed this way. Apps are designed this way. They are designed to hijack your neurochemistry to be as addictive as possible, so you use them as much as possible. Our phones also create something called cognitive overload, which is when your brain is trying to do too many things at once, and it gets overwhelmed, and it basically shuts down.

[00:02:39] This happens because we are exposed to so much information at once. Picture scrolling, and you see a heartbreaking story of a person with cancer that makes you cry. And then you see a self help person who’s giving you a motivational speech, and then you see political commentary, and then you see a funny meme, and it’s not even been a minute, and you have just ping ponged your brain through all [00:03:00] of these different emotional states and intellectual processes.

[00:03:04] And then on top of that, because of that slot machine like design, we are constantly seeking out those unpredictable rewards. So our dopamine seeking, our reward seeking, basically makes us check our phones in the middle of doing other tasks, like if we are trying to answer our emails or trying to work on a project.

[00:03:21] And that is called task switching, which quickly creates fatigue and cognitive overload. Phones also use up so much time. They are such a big time waster. Research shows that it takes 23 minutes to regain full focus after your attention is pulled away. So every single time you check your phone, you are literally adding 23 minutes to the time it’s going to take you to get back into a state of deep focus and flow.

[00:03:49] Phones also use up so much of our time. Research shows that it takes 23 minutes to regain full focus after your attention is pulled away. So every single time you [00:04:00] check your phone, you are literally adding 23 minutes to the time that it’s going to take you to get back into a state of deep focus and flow.

[00:04:07] I call it the 23 minute rule. Every time I’m about to check my phone, I ask myself, is this worth me spending the next 23 minutes being distracted and not being able to get done what I need to get done? And I can also tell myself, if I can just not check my phone for 23 minutes, I am much more likely to have regained focus.

[00:04:28] full focus on the task at hand, and thus I will be in my flow state, I will be in my productive state, and I will be less likely to be tempted by my phone. This is all because of something called attention residue, which is basically our brain sticking to the previous thing that we were doing, even if we have switched tasks.

[00:04:47] We do need breaks. I want to be very, very clear on that. But we are basically constantly taking these little breaks, which aren’t even really breaks since they don’t replenish us, and then never achieving a state of true focus. So [00:05:00] everything we are trying to get done is taking way longer and we are losing a ton of valuable time.

[00:05:05] The 23 minute stat is based on incredible research from Dr. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine, who I definitely need to get on the pod for an entire episode about attention. Let me know if you are interested in that. And then, obviously, our phones literally just take up a huge amount of our time because they are so addictive, and so we scroll even if we wish we were doing something else.

[00:05:26] The last thing I want to touch on is something that I have experienced quite a bit in my own life, and I Do not feel like enough people talk about it, which is the life is meh syndrome. You know that feeling where things that you expect to make you happy stop hitting in the same way? Like time with your friends, funny movies, beautiful nature.

[00:05:46] It all just feels kind of meh. This is grounded in real neurochemistry. Our phones are making it so our brains are becoming desensitized to dopamine. Dopamine doesn’t [00:06:00] care about us having the things that we want, it is about attention seeking and getting. It rewards you for successfully chasing, so you chase on your phone and you get a hit when you find something interesting.

[00:06:11] And as you see more and more interesting things, you become desensitized and it starts to hit less when something interesting occurs, so you scroll more and more to get that hit again. And then it translates to everyday life. Because of that dopamine depletion. experiences hit less. Everything feels meh because life isn’t a constant reward treadmill.

[00:06:34] Our brain is trying to restore a state of dopamine balance. It’s telling us to seek, seek, seek. It doesn’t care about the pleasure of an experience. So when you should be enjoying something, you have this drive to find something else. So we end up in this dopamine depleted state, constantly seeking with nothing ever earning.

[00:06:56] Actually satisfying us or making us feel content. [00:07:00] Let’s start with that. The first way that I worked on my phone addiction was by treating it like the dopamine problem that it was, which means addressing it with dopamine solutions. One of my absolute favorite ways to restore dopamine balance is based off the research of Dr.

[00:07:17] Anna Lemke, who we did an episode with that I can link in the show notes. But it is basically to gently press down on the pain levers, which can counteract this pleasure seeking element of dopamine, and it can bring our brains back into a state of balance. This is literally as easy as intentionally seeking out hard things.

[00:07:38] I aim for one hard thing a day outside of my normal work and routine. This can be a cold shower or a cold plunge. It can be a challenging crossword puzzle, or it can just be allowing for some discomfort. We live such comfort filled lives to our own detriment. In the episode that we did together, for instance, Dr.

[00:07:58] Lemke used the [00:08:00] example of Walking in the rain with our groceries. I love this research because now when I have hard things in my life, I see them as dopamine balancing opportunities and I genuinely get excited for them. Exercise. It has been shown in study after study to help restore dopamine balance and while there are a million reasons to work out that we have talked about on this podcast, that is one that is really motivating to me.

[00:08:26] If I stick to my regular workouts, I will be less addicted to my phone. I will feel less meh to the pleasures of everyday life. I want to keep these short solos as actionable as possible for you. So while there are other ways to balance dopamine, we have whole episodes about it, let’s stick to those two, which I personally think are the most impactful.

[00:08:49] Aim for one hard thing every single day and move your body every day. And also just that mental switch of thinking, okay, my phone addiction is at least in part [00:09:00] a dopamine problem and I need to approach it with dopamine solutions. That can be really helpful. The second thing is really easy and it’s been shown to be hugely effective.

[00:09:10] Turn your phone to gray scale. You can do this in the settings and you don’t have to do it all the time. It clearly makes it very weird to take pictures. I’m But, it combats a lot of the bright, appealing colors, which is one of the little tricks that developers have used to hijack our attention and make our phones so addictive.

[00:09:29] Try it for just a few hours a day, you will be surprised at how unappealing it makes scrolling. The third thing is to remind yourself that science shows the need to check your phone is temporary, and the less you check your phone, the less urge you will have to check your phone. Remember the 23 minute rule.

[00:09:50] If it’s taking you 23 minutes to get into a state of full focus, you are more distracted and thus more susceptible to the lure of your phone you. in [00:10:00] those 23 minutes. So if you can make it through that time, you will enter a state of flow, a state of focus, and you will feel the pull of your phone less. I find it so helpful to remind myself that the moments that I’m spending off of my phone aren’t only good for my brain in those moments unto themselves, they are rewiring my brain to make it easier to stay off my phone in They are rebalancing my neurochemicals.

[00:10:27] Okay, but we are all addicted, right? So how are we not checking our phones in the first place? That brings me to thing four, which is creating physical barriers to being on your phone. Phones are designed to be more powerful than our willpower. I really, really want you to internalize this. It is not your fault that you cannot stay off your phone.

[00:10:51] This is literally how it was designed. So we need to create barriers. We need to create. friction to make it possible to stay [00:11:00] off our phones so that we can rewire our brains and we can optimize our neurochemistry. This means putting your phone out of sight in another room when you’re trying to get any work done.

[00:11:10] Because remember, because of the 23 minute rule. Every single time that you are breaking focus by seeing one of those notifications pop up, it’s going to take you 23 minutes to get back to a state of deep focus. Our attention is still in part on that message, on that alert, and we’re requiring our brains to work to move that attention forward.

[00:11:31] back to the task at hand. It means not sleeping with your phone by your head. So it is the first thing that you see in the morning and the last thing that you see at night. Get an alarm clock. Put the ringer for your phone on loud and plug it in in the hallway if you’re worried about emergency calls. I promise you, There is a solution for whatever excuse that you are giving yourself for having your phone in the bedroom because until 15 years ago, 15 years ago, not that [00:12:00] long ago, none of us had smartphones and nothing catastrophic happened.

[00:12:04] Literally, use this phrasing for yourself. If I had to come up with a solution to, insert whatever problem it is, making that you feel you must sleep with your phone in your room, what would it be? Take your brain out of excuse mode and into problem solving mode. The single thing that’s helped me the most with this is a little device called a Brick.

[00:12:26] And this is not at all sponsored, I just got served an Instagram ad for this thing, which is kind of ironic, I guess, and I was intrigued and I bought it. And it’s a little thing. It’s a physical square, it’s made of plastic, it’s about the size of a box of playing cards. And you can put it on your fridge, you can put it somewhere else in your house.

[00:12:43] And then you can set which apps you want it to make completely inaccessible to you. Which apps you want to brick, hence the name. And then when you scan the brick with your phone, it makes it so you cannot click on those apps. You’ll just get a little pop up, I don’t remember what it [00:13:00] says, but it’s something like, Nope, you’re trying to reclaim your attention, and then you literally cannot reopen them until you re scan the brick.

[00:13:08] The reason that I like this is because I tried the app limits, I tried all of that, and I always, always, always just click ignore. With the brick, you have to physically get up and you have to re scan it, and if you’re out of the home without your brick, you’re just out of luck. One of the top rules of habits is creating as much friction as possible around undesired habits, and the brick adds a huge amount of friction, and I found it really, really helpful.

[00:13:34] It basically turns your smartphone into a dumb phone, and I love it. All right, we are at number five. I have created a what do I really need menu. I realized that I was reaching for my phone because I wanted a little treat, a little reward. But then I would scroll my phone and it wouldn’t feel rewarding because like we talked about, it depleted my dopamine and it left me in even more of a seeking state.

[00:13:58] I was rewarding [00:14:00] myself with something that didn’t make me feel rewarded at all. So in comes the what do I really need menu. Boom. If I am reaching for my phone, I ask myself, what do I really need? What am I looking for my phone to give me right now? Sometimes it’s a little treat, a little hit of joy. And then I consult my, what do I really need menu?

[00:14:21] And I have things listed that. actually give me joy. Like going for a walk outside, spending time in nature, hanging out with Bella, doing something creative, like coloring. I’ve been really into coloring recently or singing. I’m about to start taking singing lessons. I’m very, very excited about this journey.

[00:14:39] Quick side note because this is so interesting. Studies have found that reading activates and strengthens the networks in the brain that increase our ability to focus and pay attention. And then another study found that reading for only six minutes, six minutes, reduced stress by 68 percent. That combination of [00:15:00] Reducing stress and strengthening our attention networks are going to build the neural pathways that make it easier to stay off our phones in the future, making reading one of the most potent phone addiction breaking strategies around, and it’s also one of the most pleasurable ones.

[00:15:18] Even if you do not do the whole, what do I really need menu, I encourage you to make an effort to read every single day because it will help you combat your phone addiction. Sometimes, I’m reaching for my phone because I’m tired, so I look at my what do I really need menu and I pick a thing that makes me truly feel rested and restored, which for me is a quick meditation session.

[00:15:40] Uh, what Walk around the block or just a nap. I’ve become a big napper recently and honestly, it has changed my life. Sometimes I’m reaching for my phone just because I feel bored. I find that using the novelty rule, which we have an entire episode about, it is a great way to [00:16:00] combat general boredom.

[00:16:01] There’s really great research around novelty reducing boredom. And I find that by filling my weeks and my months with novel activities, I eliminate that. general overarching sense of boredom that leads me to seek out my phone. So I list some of my favorite novelty rule weekly activities under that section of the, what do I really need note.

[00:16:23] I will link that episode of the podcast in the show notes so that you can get the Full list of 75 plus options. Changing your environment is also a really great way to reduce boredom, so just grabbing your computer and going to a cafe or into another room is a really good option. It is also incredibly important to note that We feel more bored when we’re in dopamine deficient state.

[00:16:48] So when you use the rest of the tactics in this episode and you balance your dopamine and you fix your phone addiction, you will be far less likely to feel bored in the first place. And you’re [00:17:00] going to need to grab your phone far less often to combat that. I personally also scroll on social media for a sense of connection.

[00:17:08] So on my what do I really need list I have connection and under it I list things that actually make me feel connected like voice noting or calling my friends or even just going to a public place and being around people. Even if I don’t talk to them, I find that’s really really helpful. The last thing that I personally scroll for is because I want to procrastinate.

[00:17:30] And the 23 minute rule is the most helpful thing for me there because I remind myself that every single time I check my phone, I’m making it take longer to finish my task because it’s going to take 23 minutes, 23 minutes for me to regain full focus. Also, sometimes I procrastinate because I’m really just working too hard and I’m too burnt out and I need rest.

[00:17:56] So I go back to what do I really need? I need [00:18:00] true rest, not overstimulation disguised as rest. And I see if I can take a nap, if I can meditate, if I can read for a little bit. Everyone’s what do I really need list is gonna be different, but you can start yours by making a note on your phone and then every time you reach for your phone, ask yourself, what am I really trying to get from this?

[00:18:20] What do I really need? Write that in the note and then brainstorm a few options that really satisfy that need on a deep and true level. Those are my top five tips for breaking phone addiction, rebalancing doing hard things and exercising, utilizing the grayscale feature on our phones, reminding ourselves that the discomfort is temporary and every single bit that you endure, you are rewiring your brain to make it easier in the future.

[00:18:51] We’re creating real physical barriers and we’re creating a what do I really need list. And then I’m just going to throw reading in there too as [00:19:00] its own thing. I feel like it deserves its own spot on the list just because the science around it is so robust. So that can be a bonus one. I hope all of this helps.

[00:19:10] Definitely let me know what you try, what works, any tips you have. And as always, thank you for listening. That’s all for this episode of the Liz Moody Podcast. If you loved this episode, one of the best ways that you can support the pod is by sending a link to your friends, your family, your partner, your coworkers, you name it.

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[00:20:10] Oh, just one more thing. It’s the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.