Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
If the phone was giving you company, an evening class in something practical will not cover it. Match what you put in its place to what it was actually providing.
Subtracting an hour and leaving the hour empty is the version that collapses by Thursday. If it was company, the replacement has people in it. If it was rest, the replacement has to be genuinely restful and not another task in disguise. If it was feeling good at something, then something you can get better at. It usually takes two or three goes to find the right swap, which is normal rather than a sign of failing at this.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not neglect your rightful share in this world (Quran 28:77). Whatever the phone was quietly supplying is usually a real share of something, and it deserves a real replacement.
وَٱبۡتَغِ فِيمَآ ءَاتَىٰكَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلدَّارَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةَۖ وَلَا تَنسَ نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَأَحۡسِن كَمَآ أَحۡسَنَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيۡكَۖ وَلَا تَبۡغِ ٱلۡفَسَادَ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُفۡسِدِينَ
Seek the life to come by means of what God has granted you, but do not neglect your rightful share in this world. Do good to others as God has done good to you. Do not seek to spread corruption in the land, for God does not love those who do this,’
Qur’an 28:77read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
People who media multitask more heavily have been found to prefer immediate gratification and to reason in a faster, more intuitive way. It is an individual differences study, not a test of any substitution plan, and it does not show that the media produced the preference. It supports one practical detail: the alternative wants to pay off quickly, because something that only feels good in three months will lose.
Schutten D, Stokes KA, Arnell KM. (2017). I want to media multitask and I want to do it now: Individual differences in media multitasking predict delay of gratification and system-1 thinking.. Cognitive research: principles and implications doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A replacement only sticks if it does the same job the old thing was doing.
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
For a week, jot down what was going on just before you picked up the phone, what you were thinking while you scrolled, and how you felt when you put it down. Nothing cleverer than that.
When you wave off what your child is into, they rarely hear a comment about gaming. They hear something about themselves.
Write down three to five things you actually enjoy, small ones, and do one of them a day. That is the whole instruction.