Could you live without your smartphone?

Note: This is an update to a post originally written for Clarity Coach blog in 2020.

Back in the late 2010’s, I had a strong feeling that I was getting too attached to my smartphone. Like a third arm, it would be with me everywhere.

So by the 2020’s, slowly but surely I began the task of detaching, with a view to being smartphone free.

Like many of us, I used it for everything: emails, calls, messaging, alarm, social media, calculator, news and sport, Google Maps, Uber, other travel apps, web browsing, note taking, banking, photos, calendar and more.

It was embedded into my life and I felt it.

I naturally found my phone in my hand at any moment checking out how my football team were doing, or the latest news headlines. Any ‘waiting time’ such as in shops, waiting rooms in health care centres, just sitting idly at a friend’s house, or even watching TV at home, my phone would just ‘appear’ in my hand without consciously thinking about it.

I’d go straight to it when I needed to remember something instead of actually flexing the muscle that is my brain.

I have found myself over the years getting more and more distracted. Less able to focus. I used to read a lot when I was younger, but struggled to do this consistently until a few years ago.

How to fix your urge

Now, I have three phones, two of them smartphones, but I am not remotely addicted to any of them.

So how did I transition from it being embedded in my life to only using them for a few hours a week?

Well, I hope this post will be an encouragement to you, if you are also realising how unhealthy it is to place so much reliance on one inanimate object.

Extendible arms

As it's been such good weather as I write this, I've been on more walks than normal. I find it eminently sad to see the same scene again and again. That is families and groups of people hanging out with each other but faces hunched over their extendible arms–otherwise known as their smartphones. 

I see it at restaurants too. Whether it's couples on a romantic night out with their smartphones–but just happen to be with each other as well, or families where each member has their own arm extension that's obviously far more interesting than the faces of their loved ones.

If you relate to those scenarios, and let's face it, we've pretty much all been there–I certainly have–don't beat yourself up about it. The first step is awareness.

Our phones are designed to make us use them, to keep them in our hands and not put them down. It's in the tech companies interest. The more you use it, the more money the companies make, so they use a variety of techniques to make sure you don't put it down. We are fighting a battle, one that very slowly the tables seem to be turning. We now have more proof from some of the recent court cases that the tech companies purposely used techniques and behavioural design to create their apps knowing they would be additive to children.

I won't go into those techniques here, but if you are interested, I encourage you to read Nir Eyal's book, Indistractable. This gives greater depth on this subject.

For now, I wan't to give you 10 tips that worked for me to detach my smartphone from my life.

1. Keep it out of sight

Researchers from California and Texas Universities showed that 'The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.' Just having our smartphones near us and in sight, not only raises our level of anxiety, but it impairs our ability to think. So that's not just when using your phone, but if it is simply in the same room as you. 

Their recommendation: Separation "...defined and protected periods of separation, such as these, may allow consumers to perform better not just by reducing interruptions but also by increasing available cognitive capacity."

When I had my iPhone as my main phone, it was kept on a charger under my desk. I couldn't see it as I worked. I used Apple's Hand-off feature to answer calls through my laptop. This meant some days I never needed to touch my phone at all.

Just doing this helped me to be more focused. Even when working from other locations, I kept my phone out of site, behind my laptop or in my pocket to avoid being affected by it. Try it for a day or two and see how you feel.

2. Remove time suck apps

My weakness was sports. I dread to think of my screen time when I used to take a heavy interest, in football in particular, but also tennis and Formula One. The lockdown back in 2020, put a stop to that, which I'm grateful for (the lack of sports, not the lockdown!,) but that's another issue.

Suffice to say, I got rid of the BBC Sports app and Sky Sports Centre on my iPhone, and removed all other news apps. It took a while to get used to it and I was itching to find out results and information at first, but when I did get used to it, I felt released in not thinking I have to know the latest info and gossip.

3. Remove What's App

I've put this separately as this can be more tricky. I’d say at the time I was a moderate user of WhatsApp. It was particularly good for contacting family and friends abroad with little cost. But like other apps, do you really need to have access to it 24/7?

Today, I don’t use WhatsApp at all. I stopped after Facebook (now Meta) bought them. But what helped me transition, whilst I still had an account, was to move it to my laptop.

There are ingenious methods for getting this to work without a mobile phone. Being able to shut it off when I close my laptop down feels really empowering. It's there if I needed to use it, but I wasn’t wedded to it 24 hours a day.

Like I say, I don’t use it at all these days, but I know it can be really beneficial to some. So controlled use, away from your phone can be a help.

4. Use real tools

Get an alarm clock. A real physical one. Or at least, not your smartphone. I now use my non-smart phone, a wonderful Mudita Kompakt, as my alarm clock. It is kept on the other side of my bedroom, but as it doesn’t have internet connection and lots of apps, it just doesn’t have the attraction of a smartphone. When I go to switch off the alarm in the morning, I’m not still there half-an-hour later (as I was with my smartphone) having been distracted by email, messages, news and more. It simply doesn’t have them.

I use a real pocket torch so as not to rely on the phone. I did have a dilemma of playing podcasts. I listen to a lot of them and consider them to be good for me. But what works now is that I listen to podcasts from my laptop, or over my HomePod Mini’s at home. I also copy podcasts to my Mudita Kompakt so I can play them in the car. This has been tremendously useful, if initially a little fiddly to convert M4A files to MP3. However, there are numerous tools to do this, and quickly you’ll find a neat process. I then use the Mudita Centre software to copy the mp3 files to my Kompakt.

Since writing the original post in 2020, I now do not listen to podcasts whilst going for walks. I made an intentional decision to keep headphones off and enjoy nature. To embrace the natural, and un-natural, sounds of the city. This in itself has been refreshing to me.

One thing I have gone back on is the calculator. I still sometimes use a real calculator, but if I’m honest, more often than not, I use the one on my Kompakt. Again, the advantage over a smartphone is that I’m not likely to get distracted by app notifications and the temptation to check email, WhatsApp etc. I use the calculator, then get back to what I was doing.

5. Switch it off

Don't be afraid to switch off your phone at night. Try it an hour before you go to bed. And talking of sleep, you're not taking your phone to bed with you are you?

I'm sure you're aware that the blue light emitted from phone screens plays havoc with our ability to generate melatonin. This is our bodies natural sleep chemical. It's no wonder that so many of us have sleep problems if we are using our phones late at night.

Try switching it off overnight and leaving it in another room–like the kitchen, which is what I used to do with my iPhone.

6. Authorise 2FA via laptop

Two factor authentication is a good thing to protect our email and online accounts. However, many people assume you have to use a smartphone app like Google Authenticator. You don't. 

To transition away from my smartphone, I used an app called Authy which is available for Mac and PC and does the same thing as Google's version without requiring a smartphone.

It actually makes things easier, as instead of looking at the six numbers on your phone and typing them into your computer, you just open up the app on your laptop and copy and paste the numbers into the login box. All without touching your phone.

Today, my process is even easier still. I had been using 1Password for years, to store all my account details and provide quick login to web apps. Now they also include a 2FA addition meaning that I no longer need Authy, and can just stick with 1Password.

7. Switch to black and white

Aim to make your phone less appealing. For the last few years that I used my iPhone regularly, I had the screen set to greyscale, which lead to many inquiring looks from people! 

The main reason for this is that notification icons are designed specifically to heighten awareness which can trigger anxiety. When you see a red dot with a high number in it, this can cause some people to become anxious about responding to all those messages! Ever feel like that?

When the red dots become just another shade of grey, they lose their power and have the ability to calm you. They don't stand out.

When I've mentioned this in talks, some people have indicated how this one action helped drive down their Instagram use as it became far less appealing in black and white.

8. Leave it at home

It's easy to have a mindset that says your phone is as important as your wallet or keys when you leave the house. But I would challenge that. Try going out for walks, or even a meal without your phone. It's refreshing!

There is no reason you need to be accessible 24/7.

9. Remember the debit cards

In such a short space of time, paying for things with a phone has become common place. I still did this a lot before I replaced my iPhone, but it's easy to stop. As above leave your phone at home and take your wallet.

Additionally, if you really want to avoid having to take debit cards with you, there are other devices–which I'm currently looking at such as smart rings. These seem very sci-fi, but work in the same way as an Oyster card, or your phone. Though some of them still require an app, so be aware of that.

10. Separate business from home

One of the biggest things that has helped me get weened off my smartphone, was purchasing a separate work number. I now have an Android phone–a borrowed Samsung Galaxy Note–which I use as my main work phone. This means I can lock it away when not needed. So despite the fact it has a full app store with capability to download all the apps I was once addicted to, because my brain is now rewired through changing my environment (more on that in another post), I no longer have the desire to use the smartphone in that manner.

For full honesty, I still use my laptop more than I’d like! So it’s not like I never use a digital device in a ‘problematic use’ kind of way, but it’s way less as: a) I don’t have my smartphone on me all the time b) I have trained myself not to want to use it as much, by setting up my environment in a way that lessens the attraction.

Many people say that being accessible for their business is a key reason to have a smartphone on them all the time, but I would challenge you to question whether this is an excuse. There are almost always things, as I’ve shown above, that you can do to lessen your reliance on your smartphone.

Attention Distortion

Smartphones are wonderful devices if used with discipline. They allow us to keep in touch with friends and family. They allow us to work from home and in more flexible ways. They allow us to keep track of health activities and much more.

The problem is they have been designed purposely to distort our attention mechanisms which forces us to rely on them.

If you have children as well, remember that they will mimic what you do rather than what you say. If you always have your smartphone in your hand, this behaviour is being normalised to them.

There is no one solution to this problem, but I hope that using some of these tips will help you detach your smartphone from your life.

Which phones helped the transition?

I initially traded my iPhone for a Nokia 8110. Remember them?! The banana phone, made famous by the Matrix films. I had one of the originals and now have Nokia's updated version.

It wasn’t great. The production quality of the modern versions was much lower than the original I’d had. The main frustration, however, was how slow it was to write texts with the T9 keyboard. But I saw it as a half-way house until I could get one of the ‘smarter’ dumb phones.

I then got a Nokia 215, which was a bit more reliable than the 8110, but still in the end, awful to use for texts, with such little memory. I had to keep deleting texts just to be able to receive new messages.

I looked into getting a Punkt, a Swiss company who make stylish but really basic phones specifically for people who don't want to be digitally distracted or have their every action tracked by tech companies. No apps. No email. No camera. No GPS. Just calls, texts, and a calculator. Also check out the light phone which looks good too.

But it wasn’t until the Mudita Kompakt came out in April 2025, that I really found the device that mostly suits my needs. It’s not perfect. What is? But it’s very much better than the Nokias.

Conclusion

Finally, as regards my phones, it is near impossible these days to not have access to a smartphone. As mentioned, I do have my Samsung Galaxy, Note 9, for business, and, I still have my original iPhone 8, which is kept in my kitchen to control my HomePod Mini speakers–as Siri is still terrible! But I’m not remotely addicted to either of them, as I was in the past.

All in all after detaching from my smartphone, I am feeling more focused than I have in years, I’m reading more and gaining freedom, embracing being bored again, thus becoming more creative, engaging with people more and experiencing life first hand– not through a screen. That does not make things perfect. I still have my challenges on my laptop. But one step at a time…

If you are struggling with detaching from your smartphone and are concerned how it's affecting yourself or your kids, and want more clarity around this, I'd love to help. Get in touch and we can book a no obligation call to chat it through and I'll share the best ways I can help.

Either way, you don’t have to be tethered to your smartphone, and I hope this post helps you to slowly reduce your reliance on it and gain back your life.

Ps. I was interviewed by Katie Brockhurst for Wellbeing Radio about giving up my smartphone. Check it out in Episode 14.