Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
For one week note three things each time: how you felt before you opened it, how it felt while you were in it, and how you feel twenty minutes after putting it down.
Most people find the before and the after are not the same, and that the middle was better than either. Usually one or two apps come out fine and one does not, which is far more useful than a general sense that your phone makes you feel bad. Keep it crude, three words in your notes app is plenty. The value is that you found this out yourself, which is the difference between agreeing with advice and actually changing something.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who remember God standing, sitting, and lying down, who reflect (Quran 3:191). Noticing what is happening to you in the middle of an ordinary day is a small piece of that same habit of reflection.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَذۡكُرُونَ ٱللَّهَ قِيَٰمࣰ ا وَقُعُودࣰ ا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمۡ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلۡقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقۡتَ هَٰذَا بَٰطِلࣰ ا سُبۡحَٰنَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ ٱلنَّارِ
who remember God standing, sitting, and lying down, who reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth: ‘Our Lord! You have not created all this without purpose- You are far above that!- so protect us from the torment of the Fire
Qur’an 3:191read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A cross-sectional path analysis found that problematic smartphone use sat between how people think about their future and how much they delayed going to bed. That is a statistical model of relationships in one sample at one moment, and it cannot say what causes what. It is here as a sign that these patterns are traceable at all. Your own week of notes is the only thing that will say anything about you.
Mao B, Chen S, Wei M, Luo Y, Liu Y. (2022). Future Time Perspective and Bedtime Procrastination: The Mediating Role of Dual-Mode Self-Control and Problematic Smartphone Use.. International journal of environmental research and public health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A pattern you watched happen to you is more convincing than the same pattern described to you by somebody else.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Screens are easy to start and have no natural end. So the part worth planning is not the getting on, it is the getting off.
Gaming for an hour before you start the work almost never costs an hour. Do the thing that has to be done first, then the thing you want.
A rule that holds in your house and nowhere else is not really a rule. Children locate the unrestricted house within about a week.