I want to have a better relationship with my phone, so here’s some advice for me and you (if you need it).
What do we do with our phones
Let’s think about all the different things we do with our phones. Catching up with the news. Chatting with friends. Taking and posting pictures and videos. Looking at other people’s pictures or videos. Playing games. Listening to podcasts. Meeting new people. Watching TV. Playing music. Being part of communities (sport, politics etc). Directions. Reviews. Reading books, stories, articles, or blogs. Researching things. Learning new information, skills, ideas. To earn money. Creating ‘content’. There are probably loads more.
If we also ask the question, ‘why do we want to look at our phones?’ we might find lots of other answers too. To not be bored, to relax, to self-soothe, to feel some control, to distract ourselves, to change our mood, to kill time. Again, there are probably loads more.
What could we do *without* our phones?
We demand a lot from our phones and they can do a lot for us. But just as with any relationship, if we ask one thing to do so much for us, then we might find after a while that it gives us less and less back. (Which means we spend more time with it trying to get more and more out of it.)
So look at our lists. Which one of these can only be accomplished by using our phones? How else might we be able to do those things? Write down all the different ways that you could do all of those different things. Just by recognising this we can see that we are giving ourselves options. When we do that we are increasing our capacity to act, we are giving ourselves the freedom to choose.
You could track your menstrual cycle (if you have one) without your phone. Also here’s an actual calendar the BISH Calendar that you could get printed.
Compelled
So just as I was writing that last paragraph I reached to look at my phone without even realising. I’m compelled to look at it without even consciously thinking about it. Because I do so much with my phone all day I just feel used to grabbing it all the time. It makes sense too because so many big things have happened via my phone: good news, bad news, lovely texts, amazing feedback, learning about an amazing idea, seeing videos of our orca comrades.
If I’m going to have a better relationship with my phone I’m going to have to get better at recognising when I am picking it up without realising. What I was pleased to notice just now was that even as I picked it up I thought, ‘why are you doing that, you’re working?’ and I put it right down again.
Urge surfing
Next time I get the urge to pick it up, can I ‘urge surf (pdf link)’, just see if I can be with the urge for a little bit, a second, two seconds, before I touch my phone. Even as I touch the phone, maybe I can just hold it before opening the screen. One second…, two seconds…. Perhaps we could try this and just get into noticing.
As we get into this ‘noticing’ the urge, we might find these gaps emerging between urge to pick up and picking up. In that gap, can we insert ourselves? What do we want from the phone? Is there something else we could do instead? What are our bodies saying? What emotional state are we in?
If we don’t manage to find this gap, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just see what you are pleased to notice and see if you can find that very first sign that you have an urge to look at it next time. Also remember, these phones have basically everything on them and they are out to get you!
If you would like this in a nice leaflet and also a poster, either support the BISH Patreon, or buy a download to the leaflet for just £3. You get a nice resource, I get a bit of funding for BISH.
What else might we be doing
When we are giving our phone attention, it means that we are not giving something else our attention (we really can’t multitask as much as we think we can). What else might we do if we are not on our phones? I was on a train this morning, and instead of looking at my phone I was staring out of the window: I saw 4 deers! Yes I missed out on that poorly cropped clip of Wrighty scoring against Forest from back in the day, but I saw deers! So next time you pick up your phone, perhaps remind yourself, when you give your phone attention, what are you not giving attention to? A conversation, wildlife, an interesting thought, beautiful light, someone who needs you, a cool person?
Recharging
When I put my phone down to charge, particularly if it’s out of reach, it gives me a chance to recharge too. Maybe I’ll make a cuppa, do some work, or do a bit of yoga. Then when I go back to my fully charged phone I’m curious and a little bit excited about what might be waiting for me. It’s useful for me to put my phone down so that I can have the fun of picking my phone up. If you don’t put it down, you can’t pick it up. It’s like the sad / joy we get of saying goodbye to a loved one. We know that we’ll be excited about seeing them next time.
Relaxation
Let’s be real, when we’re on our phones we are probably not really relaxing. We’re constantly attentive, thinking, clicking, and working. We might be having a sit or a lie down but, we’re probably a bit activated and maybe a bit stressed. If we are ‘zoning out’, getting tunnel vision, not hearing what’s going on around us, feeling a bit physically stuck, we might be stressed. That’s definitely happened to me. So sometimes, we could all just take my advice in the ‘how to deal with stress’ article and allow the parasympathetic nervous system to take over. I sometimes just put my phone on my belly. Then I watch it rise up as I breathe in, and sink down as I breathe out. We could try that for ten breaths and see what that does.
Touching and feeling
When dicking around online, just passively scrolling, zooming and clicking, I think that I’m getting some kind of pleasure just from touching the screen. That sounds really stupid, but moving things, people, ideas, news, nature, culture, on my phone makes me feel like my finger has this power. Maybe this is one of the reasons we like to touch our phones so much. They are giving us a small amount of power and control. So maybe let’s try to touch some other things too! I like to touch trees, plants, old walls, and sometimes myself and other people (TMI). Just reconnecting our feeling of touch and the pleasure we get from that might just give us some options: more freedom to be us.
Make it social and set limits
My mate has a good system with his kids. They’re all allowed to use their phones, but only in communal areas, never just by themselves. This means that there is always some kind of supervision, some way of their parents having a relationship with their kids’ phone use. Clever idea I think. (It’s the kind of approach that experts recommend, in case you’re a parent wanting advice about this.)
We could make our phone use more social. If you’re around someone, allow yourself to laugh out loud, or smile. Notice if you are really enjoying something and allow other people to see it. Even if it’s just a nice little micro-moment that you experience with a stranger. You could find a way to set your own limits. Set a timer for 20 minutes and then put your phone down. Have an app which restricts when you can use it. That kind of thing.
Remember, our phones contain too much (and never enough)
We just don’t have the capacity to take in, understand, feel, make use of, or react to everything we encounter on our phones. This is particularly true for social media, where images, news stories, entertainments, sadness, joy, humour, violence are hurled at us. So I just opened my insta account and found the following. Recipe. Musk. A boycott. Some yoga thing. Someone pole dancing. Left wing take on the right wing. Some AI hotties. Recipe. Roy Keane being pissed off. Recipe. all interspersed with ads. It’s just not possible to pay proper attention to all these things, but the infinite scroll feature means that we just keep going. Distracted, inattentive, passive, stupid, docile. It’s just useful to remember sometimes that this is what they want.
They’re out to get us
Screens are distracting, it’s all part of what is known as the attention economy. It started with the advent of cinema, then TV, and now with phones. If ever I’m in a pub with a TV on, I always look at it (or make a determined effort not to look at it). They are demanding my attention at all times.
Phones are also really good at taking up our attention, because they aren’t just showing TV, they are inviting you to do pretty much anything you want. Also all the apps (social media apps in particular) are very alluring. Infinite scroll, all the bright colours, the overwhelming entertainment, the different options for you to watch, read, click, and look. They are out to get us.
As soon as we click on something, someone is usually trying to extract value from us. Clicks, views, time spent, all create value for the big tech companies who apparently are taking over the world right now too. I wrote about how this works for porn companies, but the same thing happens with social media and messaging companies. Thing is, we enjoy using these things, so it’s impractical for a lot of us to just give up on them.
From a weapon to a tool
If our phone is out to get us, to compel us to pick them up, to extract attention and value, and make us stupid, then they are weapons used against us. The answer to this is to turn a weapon into a tool. If we can use our phones more deliberately, more intentionally, then we might be able to get more value from them than they extract from us. If every time we pick our phone up we will learn something, or connect with someone, or do something helpful, or to have a genuine belly laugh, or find something truly beautiful then it’s a tool. It’s a tool if we put it (and our time) to good use and we manage not to get distracted by all the bullshit, the crappy AI, the rubbish clips, the slop.
You might also like this idea about how to do self consent (by choosing chocolate bars).
Having *a bit* of a better relationship with our phones
Here’s some advice from my resource about how to feel a bit better. Let’s say that ‘having a better relationship with our phones’ was a scale, and 10 is at one end, where we only ever use it as a useful tool and put it down when we want, and 0 is the opposite. Where are you on that scale now (I’m a 5)? Now ask yourself, how come you are that number (5) and not one lower (4)? What do you know about yourself that puts you as high as that number? (Write a list).
You’ll probably never get to a ‘10’ all the time, but let’s start being one point higher up the scale than you are now (6). What would be the very first thing you would notice? What would you be doing instead? How will other people respond? What will they see? How will you respond back? As you go about your day, what do you think you’d be pleased to notice? What else?
What works for you? Let me know in the comments below.
© Justin Hancock, 2025 Find out more about me and BISH here.
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