you know the feeling you have a free moment in your day and as if on autopilot you find yourself aimlessly reaching for your phone social media dominates our lives and it's no coincidence corporations leverage cuttingedge neuros pychology to create dopamine reward systems that keep us hooked It's A Dark Truth that our attention is one of the greatest Commodities of the 21st century and it comes at a great personal cost post after post our brain is exposed to so much information and a skewed view of reality reducing our self-esteem Ste magnifying unrealistic comparisons stealing our attention
spans and our ability to focus on deep work and ultimately taking us away from truly living a life that we love our lives are broken when we start only living through the brain candy on the screen these apps that claim to connect us and enrich our lives have in many ways only served to isolate us even further from The Real World if you've ever struggled with this too I'm so glad that you're here this video might be the sign that it's time to break the cycle today I'll walk you through a complete evidence-based 5-day guide
to break your phone addiction and reclaim your time your energy and your life once and for all I've created a notion companion guide for this video to help you follow along with the strategies and actually Implement them practically in your life so check it out down below in the description and also very excitingly I've started a newsletter sharing weekly tips thoughts and bonus content to help you live a life that you love link down below if you're interested to join if you're new here my name is Izzy I'm a doctor and Cambridge graduate and I'm
here to help you achieve your goals in smart sustainable ways I've organized this into a 5-day challenge with five themes and each day there will be three things to do each day for the next 5 days set aside just 10 minutes to implement something from that day feel free to come back to this video or use the free notion template I've made to help you to track your progress because a lot of this is making sure that you're actually executing on all the things that you want to do I'll include time stamps to everything so
you can skip ahead to the bit that's relevant to you before we get to what we'll be doing each day I want you to take a moment and think about why this matters to you and why you're here I want you to feel how meaningful this would be in your body mind and your heart imagine that world where you free up hours of the time that you've spent Doom scrolling think about all the things that you could do in that time the projects you could work on the relationships you could deepen the self-care that you
could invest in the real world out there that you could connect with then flip it around if you continue on the current path that you're on your attention being unintentionally and aimlessly soaked into the apps brainless content where do you end up in a few years time how does that feel compared to the first scenario by contrasting these two realities we use the evidence-based power of fear appeal where we realize that there is an outcome that we don't want and we also appeal to the sense of self-efficacy where we realize actually right here right now
there's something that we can do about this and change our future to be closer to the one that we want to live now that we really understand and feel what's at stake here let's move on to the strategy day one awareness and intention the first thing is to develop self-awareness business and per performance specialist H James Harrington has said that measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually Improvement if you can't measure something you can't understand it if you can't understand it you can't control it if you can't control it you can't
improve it this can be sort of summarized by the phrase if you can't measure it you can't manage it regularly tracking and reflecting on your social media use means you'll be able to understand the problem and ultimately as Harrington says improve it apps that provide screen time analytics can be enlightening for us on iPhone and Apple products there's the screen time feature and on Android there's the digital well-being feature and any other phones or devices that you might have there maybe integrated screen time apps or you can always download a third party one as well
the second activity for day one is mindful journaling reflecting on and recording how and why you use your phone for this day whenever you reach for your phone take a moment to breathe and think about the emotions that you're currently experiencing And the emotions that you're searching for identify your intention for reaching your phone and then write write these feelings down in your Journal either in a physical notebook or on the notes app in your phone and the third thing for the say is to write down your intentions write down everything that you could dream
of doing and achieving with the hours of screen time saved if you usually spend let's say 2 hours of screen time per day over a year that's over 700 hours of time with those 700 hours of time what could you achieve actually probably quite a lot so just have a think about this what's your intention with this write down firsty why you're doing this how it would feel to succeed and how it would feel to fail a 2007 psychological study under Dr Gail Matthews found that people who wrote down their goals accomplished significantly more than
those who didn't so take this step seriously because it's important day two ReDiscover life and mindfulness come up with a healthy replacement come up with some kind of alternative option instead of reaching off for your phone that you can default to often we turn to social media simply because we're bored and look looking for entertainment or because we're struggling with another task and looking for an alternative to procrastinate with fundamentally often we're looking for that sense of entertainment and I invite you to wonder can we find that entertainment elsewhere of course we can because there
are a multitude of leisure activities that don't require the presence of a phone reading a book playing an instrument going for a walk outside getting a coffee with a friend these activities require active engagement but are much more intrinsically rewarding and will make you feel better than scrolling through social media with that being said it's not easy to resist the almost magnetic pull of your phone so here's my advice write out a list of all the things that you enjoy and love doing and pin this up somewhere that you can see it regularly to remind
you of all the amazing things the world outside your phone offers one study from the University of Texas argues based on its findings that the mere presence of a smartphone alone can be distracting whether you check it or not whether it produces notifications or not so consider leaving your phone behind when you try to engage with these other activities unrelated to it the second thing is to develop mindfulness and a sense of presence mindfulness and meditation has literally changed my life no exaggeration and it's a crucial part of How I build the focus mindfulness and
presence of mind to actually take a few steps back from social media just taking a few seconds to go through a breathing and grounding exercise can completely change our mindset and bring us away from that gravitational pull of the black hole of social media back into the real world try following along with this 10-second exercise which I absolutely love and come back to again again wherever you are in the world watching this video I invite you to pause for a moment and take stock notice your weight pressing into the ground beneath you relax your shoulders
your face your belly and settle into your body and your breath inhale deeply into your belly over 4 seconds hold at the top for two then exhale softly over 4 seconds bringing in just a simple single grounding breath like this has genuinely saved me from many a doom scroll and reminded me that there is so much more to life a key part of my journey with meditation was headspace an app with a range of guided meditations which I've used since 2019 and so I was very excited when they reached out to partner and a big
thanks to headspace for sponsoring this video as you may know I'm a big advocate of meditation for mental well-being self- understanding and personal development I started meditating just over 4 years ago and it has has been one of the most powerful drivers of mental balance focus and personal growth for me it's provided me with an Avenue to develop mindfulness equinity and compassion even in the midst of high stress and heavy workloads both as a medical student and as a doctor even just a few minutes of meditation each day can really have a positive impact and
that's literally all you need to get started that's what I started with beyond my personal experiences meditation is genuinely evidence-based I'll pop a couple of studies on screen now for example in 2007 a study on students found that just 5 days of meditation had a positive impact on the students attention as well as their ability to manage stress at one point I'd actually built up a pretty sizable daily run streak on headspace of over 800 days as I just loved it so much as a part of my daily routine to keep me grounded what I
especially love about their app is that they guide you through your meditation Journey from the very start even if you've never meditated before speaking from my own experience it can be really hard to know where to even begin with meditation when you have no practice doing it they have an introductory beginners course which I actually did near the start of my journey and a range of more specific and targeted meditations and also some more advanced meditations with the longer periods of Silence to help deepen your practice if you've ever struggled to sleep due to a
busy mind one thing that I've found so helpful is using their sleep casts which really help me to drift off and quiet down the monkey mind whether it's navigating life events developing focus and mindfulness or just overall achieving your goals of becoming the best version of yourself I'm a strong believer that meditation can help get us there if you're interested in checking out headspace my link below or this QR code will give you a 60-day free trial to Kickstart or continue your meditation Journey tip number three for this day is to wear a mindfulness item
so a bracelet or a ring or even a hairband that you designate as your mindful reminder so each time you see it remind yourself to be present this serves as a nice little visual cue to keep you on track so choose something that you actually like the look of so for example I could choose let's say this ring to be my new mindful ring where actually I whenever I see it I remind myself oh I could just take a breath and come back to the present moment day three declutter and D noise the first thing
for this day is to uninstall unnecessary apps clear up your phone and reorganize where your apps all appear maybe even putting your social media apps on the last page of your home screen or inside a folder so there's a little bit more effort to have to go and actually open up your social media I found that actually I have a lot of apps that I don't really use anymore and also ones that send me notifications that I don't even want which brings us on to point number two for this day which is to limit notifications
one 2015 study concluded that mobile phone notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention demanding task even when the participants in the experiment didn't actually check their phone after getting the notification this means that any notification even if you don't check it breaks into your attention and takes away from your ability to actually focus on deep work so the best choice is to just turn them off so you don't even get them and a lot of the notifications we get I'm sure you've noticed this are actually really non-essential and just slightly annoying you can do
this on iPhone by going to your settings and in the notifications tab scroll through your list of apps and turn off any that you don't actually really need or you don't want to be notifying you apps often spam us with notifications because they can and it increases engagement in that app by taking up a small microsc of your precious attention don't let this happen unintentionally something you may be wondering is how do you define what's a non-essential notification as you scroll through these apps ask yourself about the value that each notification brings brings into your
life this can cultivate that sense of discernment in your digital choices and help you to clear away some of that mental clutter and remove all the things that are not sparking Joy I've personally turned off notifications for majority of my apps including Instagram Twitter Facebook Etc and another thing I do is if an app repeatedly notifies me without me actually wanting that notification then I take the 5 Seconds of effort to go and turn off the notifications for that app which will save me multiple times in the future from having to look at the notification
that I don't even want to receive the third step is to declutter your social media by unfollowing accounts that aren't bringing any positivity in your life in essentialism a book by business Strat Greg mckian he makes the point that we control Our Lives by Taking Back our right to choose saying the essentialist doesn't just recognize the Power of Choice he celebrates it the essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us so take a moment to look through who
you're following on social media and ask yourself a few questions firstly do I know this person well maybe they're actually a friend in real life so makes sense to follow them and if not is this account helping me to move in a positive direction if they're not helping and impacting you positively then maybe mindfully unfollow these accounts in this way you're asserting your right to choose and not letting your time and energy be controlled by accounts which are either wasting your time or negatively impacting your life and your self-esteem day four reduce Temptation the first
step for today is learning how to use grayscale mode to our benefit have a look at these two feeds which one is more interesting and engaging changing your phone screen to black and white can reduce the Allure of colorful and engaging apps making you less likely to want to engage with your phone a 2021 study of 133 college students where 63 were instructed to switch their phone to grayscale mode until a second visit found that participants in the grayscale group exhibited a significant decrease in problematic smartphone usage anxiety and screen time during their second visit
and a previous 2015 study done on rats not college students this time found the exposure to the color black versus red blue and green resulted in far less dopamine in the system which would mean that actually the motivation to actually view colorful images for the rats was much reduced at the dopamine level and a similar mechanism may explain the results in the college student group to point two for this day is to create a rest nest for your phone away from your desk and away from your immediate bedside somewhere that it can belong making it
feel a bit cute is quite helpful so you'll actually use it and by keeping it more than an arms length away from your bed and your desk you'll have to actively move to reach for it rather than just immediately picking it up highly successful businesswoman Ariana Huffington who founded the Huffington Post literally tucks her phone in at night in a separate room and says good night to it it may sound a little silly and maybe in some ways it is but the ritualization of this activity marks a clear delineation in your head and makes it
clear that you're done using your phone Point number three is to create no phone zones so for example I have a rule of trying as much as possible to not use my my phone in bed this creates that mental partition and helps you to keep the phone away from other modes of being such as sleeping or working so if you keep it away from your bed keep it away from your desk and only use it let's say in the lounge room this may be helpful a bonus Point number four which is almost an extension of
the rest Nest is to put a hairband or a rubber band or something else on your phone maybe a sticker partly blocking the screen of your phone so that when you reach to use it you have to remove this and when you remove it really think about whether there's something else that you might rather be doing day five resolutions detox and commitment we've made it to day five and the first thing for today is to revisit your journal from day one reflect on how the challenge has gone and how you actually feel now which strategies
worked best for you which didn't work so well was there anything you think that you could have improved on so these are just a couple of the questions you could ask yourself and feel free to answer these in your journal in a new day five entry point number two for our final day is bringing in the idea of digital detox designating specific times or even even entire days where you go completely without digital devices or without your phone in the 2014 survey of Americans 47% said that they couldn't last a day without their smartphone so
you're not alone if this seems daunting but don't let yourself continue to be part of that 47% bringing in regular digital detoxes can help you feel more equipped to handle the world without a phone while still being aware that due to the nature of the 21st century and the world we live in it doesn't necessarily make sense for us to completely ditch it for me whenever I've actually done a digital detox so I've went on a few meditation Retreats for 3 days or 10 days or 5 days where we weren't allowed to use a phone
and we had to lock away all our digital devices I actually found a deep sense of peace and joy and I didn't really miss the phone so I'd honestly recommend trying this out you could just switch your phone off for a couple of hours a day or maybe even just designate Sundays as your mindful Sundays where you digitally detox and focus on being present and see how it goes for you point three is that since we're now at the end of this 5-day challenge it's really really important that we set long-term mindful goals around our
social media usage if you're unsure of where to start here check out my video on how to set goals in a realistic and mindful way somewhere over here finally plan a checkin on how you're doing every week or so where you review your screen time coming back to point number one bringing that awareness in regularly and recommitting to the habits that help you to stay away from social media habits like maybe meditation or journaling or doing a breathing exercise the most important part of watching YouTube videos on how to improve your life is actually implementing
them and I know it's often easy to just watch YouTube videos and not take any action so I invite you to decide right now that's right right now on two actions that you can commit to to help move you towards your goal write these down in the comments below and let me know if there was anything in this video that particularly stood out and those two action points that you're going to take feel free to come up with your own that feel achievable that you can really commit to right now you can get the notion
template completely for free down below in the description I really want to see you succeed and see all of us succeed in living a life that we love so I really hope this video was helpful if you enjoyed this video you might like this one over here where I talk about some more healthy habits you can Implement in your life with all the Newfound time you're not spending on social media and again if you'd like to check out headspace to kick off or continue your meditation Journey then feel free to check out the link below
for 60 days of a free trial thank you so much for watching as always take care of yourself and I'll see you in the next video bye
