Don’t feel you always have to be there. In the not-so-olden days of letters and landlines, contacting someone was slow and unreliable and an effort. In the age of WhatsApp and Messenger it’s free and easy and instant. The flipside of this case is that we are expected to be there. To pick up the phone. To get back to the text. To answer the email. To update our social media. But we can choose not to feel that obligation. We can sometimes just let them wait. We can risk our social media getting stale. And if our friends are friends they will understand when we need some headspace. And if they aren’t friends, why bother getting back anyway?

2. Turn off notifications

This is essential. This keeps me [just about] sane. All of them. All notifications. You don’t need any of them. Take back control.

3. Keep the phone away from you

Have times of the day where you’re not beside your phone. Okay, I’m bad at this one. But I’m getting better. No one needs their phone all the time. We don’t need it by the bed. We don’t need it while we’re eating meals at home. We don’t need it when we go out for a run. Here’s something I do now: I go for a walk without my phone. I know it sounds ridiculous to present that as some big achievement, but for me it was. It’s like exercise. It takes effort.

4. Don’t keep checking you phone

Don’t press the home button to check the screen every two minutes for texts. Practise feeling the urge to check and don’t.

5. Don’t link your joy to your phone battery

Don’t tie your anxiety levels to how much power you have left on your phone.

6. Don’t swear at your phone

Don’t plead with your phone. Don’t bargain with your phone. Don’t throw your phone across the room. It is indifferent to your feelings. If the phone has no signal, or no power, it is not because it hates you. It is because it is an inanimate object. It is, in short, a phone.

7. Don’t put your phone by the bed

I’m not judging, by the way. Most people sleep with their smartphone by the bed because they’ve replaced alarm clocks. Most nights I have the phone by the bed. My parents have their phones by the bed. Everyone I know has their phones by their beds. Maybe one day our beds will be our phones. But I do seem to sleep better when my phone isn’t by my bed. You know, if it’s in another room, or even just another part of the room. I know it might be unrealistic. But it’s good to have an aspiration. A dream to work towards. To fantasise about the day when we’re strong enough never to need to have the phone by our beds. Like the olden days. The 1800s. The 1900s. 2006.

8. Practise app minimalism

An overload of apps and options adds to the choice but also stress of smartphone use. We are given an almost infinite array of things we can add to our phones. But more choice leads to more decisions and more stress. You were born without any apps on your phone. Hey! Guess what? You were born without any phone at all. And life was still beautiful.

9. Don’t try to multitask

We have phones that can do everything from map read to tune our guitars, and it’s tempting to imagine that we can do as many things, and all at once. For instance, while writing this one point alone I have had to consciously stop myself from checking my emails, checking my text messages, checking my social media. It took effort. According to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, we aren’t really made for the kind of multitasking the internet age encourages us to do. ‘Even though we think we’re getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient,’ he writes, in The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction cycle, rewarding the brain for losing focus. It can also increase stress and lower IQ. ‘Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugar-coated tasks,’ concludes Levitin.

10. Accept uncertainty

The temptation to check your phone is down to uncertainty. That’s what makes it so addictive. You want someone to get back to your text but you don’t know if they have. You want to check. You want to see the promise and mystery of the three little circles, dancing with hope. You want to know how your photo or status update is going down. But why do we need to know right now? Why can’t it all wait till after your lie-in/meeting/walk/TV show/meal/daydream? Do people really need to check their phones during meetings, or while attending funerals? Maybe if we understood that the checking is never fully satisfying we wouldn’t. Because there is no end to the uncertainty. There is no final checking of your smartphone. Think of all the times you checked your phone yesterday. Did you really need to so often? I certainly didn’t. I have definitely cut down, but still have a way to go. How many times do you touch your phone a day? Or look at it? It might be hard to keep count. The answer might be well in the hundreds. Imagine, l say to myself, if you just looked at your phone, say, five times a day. What catastrophe would occur?

The post 10 Ways to Own a Smartphone and Still Be a Functioning Human Being appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

These days’ smart phone capabilities seem endless. Whilst making calls is the primary function, now you can surf the internet, take photos, record videos, download entire libraries of information and navigate your way around the world with Google Maps! With apps galore we are just waiting for the next amazing function.

Mobile phones can also however cause accidents, be a source of immense irritation and have a detrimental effect on interpersonal communication. So often now if a mobile phone bleats its owner will bow to its beck and call. How many times when you are with someone do you feel marginalised by their technological gadgets? You may, if you are really lucky get an “Oh sorry do you mind if I just take this call?” More often than not your sentence will be left in midair as something more interesting for your companion comes along.

Wouldn’t it be great if every mobile phone came along with a little book of mobile manners that everyone adhered to!

Well here is a list of tips that will help you to manage your mobile and set the example for others to embrace too.

A quick guide to for mobile manners

• Do make the person you are with feel more important than your mobile phone. Be present when you are with people. Switch your phone to silent, or better still, turn it off, and put it away.
• Be mindful about not developing a dependency on constant communication. It simply is not healthy. Do you really need to have your phone with you all the time?
• Take off your earpiece when you are not on the phone. This will stop you from looking like an extra on Star Trek. Plus, who wants to talk to someone who is so obviously on call alert.
• You don’t need to speak louder into your mobile than any other phone you use. These gadgets have incredibly sensitive microphones. Honestly!

• Answer your phone as soon as it goes off. Not everyone wants to listen to a mobile phone ringing for ages, even if your latest ring tone sounds ‘cool’ to you.
• Be aware that people around you are listening if you answer your phone in public. Not everyone wants to hear what you are saying to someone else and could find it offensive, embarrassing or just plain boring.
• Absolutely under no circumstances use your mobile phone when you are driving. Let’s face it, some people have a problem mastering vehicles and phones individually, let alone trying to multitask the two together. This is a recipe for disaster.
• The ultimate display of etiquette has to be not using your mobile phone in the loo. Need I say more!

The post The little book of manners for every smart phone user appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.