How to use your phone less, without missing what matters.

1. Let only people interrupt you

Turn off notifications for every app except messages and calls from people, and in most phones you can narrow even those to a short list of the people who matter. Most of the pull comes from apps, not from people.

2. Give your day quiet hours

Use your phone’s focus or do-not-disturb modes on a schedule: during deep work, during meals, and from an hour before bed. Let the few people who may need you urgently through.

3. Give the phone a place

Charge it outside the bedroom, and leave it in a bag or another room while you cook, eat or talk. A phone you cannot see is easier to forget than one on the table.

4. Check mail and feeds at set times

Two or three set times a day for mail and social apps beat a hundred glances. Move those apps off your home screen so opening them is a choice, not a reflex.

5. Make the screen less tempting

A grayscale screen and a plain home screen make the phone less interesting to look at. Many people keep only tools on the first screen: maps, calendar, camera, notes.

6. Take the small things off the phone

A lot of picking up is for small things: the time, the next meeting, whether that message matters, a quick fact (researchers call it the checking habit). A watch can handle some of these. A ring like Lychnos Ring, in development, is designed to handle them from your finger with its own connection, so the phone can stay away: one buzz for what matters, the first line on a small screen, the rest at your ear. How a phone-free assistant works.

7. Look at the numbers once a week

All our research guides in one place: phone habits, what the research says.

Your phone’s screen-time report shows where the time goes and whether the changes work. Change one thing at a time, and keep what helps. Helping someone else cut down? Start with gifts for someone always on their phone.