Yesterday, I joined Manu’s experiment to reduce the time we spend on our smartphones. Every Sunday, we share our screen time stats and reflect on how the past week went.
Here is my first weekly recap.
First week report
This first week report does not include the day I’m writing this, which is Sunday 15th, because it’s still morning and I prefer my reports to include full days. The next report will include the seven previous days, from Sunday to Saturday.
A few notes on the past week
Wednesday and Thursday were the days I used my phone the most. Those were the two days I was at the office. When I’m not home, I usually don’t have my personal laptop with me, and I use my smartphone mainly for browsing the web, messaging, and listening to music. When I’m home, I always make my laptop my first choice to interact digitally, including for messaging apps like WhatsApp.
In my previous post where I announced that I’m joining the challenge, I wrote this:
Removing all social media applications from my smartphone and blocking the domains of all major social networks.
I may have lied a bit. As you can see, I didn’t block Reddit, which is a social network I still visit a lot, only through the browser, though. I like Reddit, but I can totally wait until I’m on my computer to visit it. So I finally blocked the domain on my phone, and starting now, I’ll visit it only from a computer.
Regarding the other days of the week, I almost didn’t touch my phone. But let’s quickly look at each day, one by one.
Week 1 – From Monday to Wednesday
Not much to comment on about my usage on Monday 9 and Tuesday 10. I barely touched my phone. As written above, my usage on Wednesday 11 skyrocketed as I left home for two days. That day, I had a two-hour train trip during which I mainly read a newspaper while listening to music.
The three apps I used the most: WhatsApp, Safari (Reddit and a private forum) and a newspaper app (Courrier international).
Week 1 – From Thursday to Saturday
Same comment as above for Thursday 12th. I only had my phone to interact with my digital world, so I used it way more than Friday 13th and Saturday 14th, when I was home and I didn’t need to touch my phone.
I came back home on Thursday 12th, after another two-hour train ride during which I dived into a book. That was also the day I received my brand new alarm clock, which now sits on my nightstand. I use it to listen to the radio to fall asleep and to wake up in the morning, all of that instead of my phone, which I leave in another room for the night. Plus, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m not tempted anymore to grab my phone to quickly check the time, and maybe WhatsApp, and maybe this website, and maybe my e-mails…
The three apps I used the most: Safari (Reddit, Gemini and a private forum), WhatsApp and Doppler.
Doppler is the app I use to listen to music. On Saturday, I was out driving and I used my phone to blast some music.
Week 1 – Wrap-up
As I wrote in my post yesterday, it’s been a while since I implemented some changes to reduce my phone usage, but I didn’t really have the habit of looking at my screen time reports. And to be honest, I’m quite happy to see those small numbers. I think I can do better, just for the sake of it, but it’s not bad at all and I won’t be disappointed if they are about the same in my next week’s report. I’m satisfied with my current phone usage, but we’ll see how it turns out next Sunday!
Side note
You might have noticed the name Orko on my screenshots. That’s what I call my phone, in tribute to this little guy:
