Making Smartphones and Social Media work for you (not the other way round)

We live in an 'Attention Economy'. It seems that everywhere we turn, someone is trying to get us to consume some form of content.

In this Attention Economy, the scarce resource in question is, well, attention.

Just as you have limited to spend in the monetary economy, you must take control of your attention and spend it wisely in this brave new world.

I spent nearly seven years being dictated to by my phone - notifications coming in from 50 different apps telling me to look at it, group chats having me sit and read 100 messages every hour, messaging back and forth with someone for days on end.

No more - I thought. I wanted my life back.

Through trial and error, I've arrived at the following:

1.   Remember when mobile phones were... mobile phones? Go to your phone settings and turn off all notifications, except for phone calls and SMS messages. I've been happy using an app called Key Messages (no affiliation) for a couple of years now; which filters out any unknown numbers' texts and notifies you at the end of the day of any 'spam messages' that came through, for you to then decide if you wish to start 'allowing' that sender. Android doesn't offer this function unfortunately. Hey presto! Now YOU decide when YOU wish to interact with social media; not the other way round.

2.   I don't really do group chats... I tried quitting entirely, which worked for a while, but sometimes these are where some of the funniest conversations I've ever been part of have taken place - so the FOMO got to me. I'm weak. Seriously though, group chats should be taking place down the pub, in real life! I rarely interact on them these days - I tend to open WhatsApp once per day and have a skim through all the messages. I've never missed anything important, funnily enough. If someone wants to get hold of me, they know by now to send me a SMS message like "going to x at y o'clock - you coming?".

3.   This brings me to my next point. All these messaging apps should be used to arrange face to face interactions - not to substitute them. I'm single - I 'date', inevitably I use dating apps. In the past, I'd find myself messaging a girl back and forth for days on end - which often led nowhere... I kept quitting dating apps and focusing on real life interactions exclusively, but then I realised that I just needed to be clear on what I wanted . I started minimising the time I spent on dating apps; checking them once per day and leading my conversations to asking to meet much sooner. This prevented my time being wasted and actually led to more in-person meetups - which is surely the reason we were on there?! You see, being lonely is akin to smoking 15 cigarettes per day - it's a health risk! While we may feel that messaging each other is socially stimulating, it simply doesn't substitute face to face interaction and therefore doesn't provide the life-extending qualities that come with it. I don't smoke because of the damage it does to your body, so why would I want to be lonely? My attitude has become "if you want to meet up, I'll make time for you, if you want to message me, make it quick - I'm busy living my life". I want friends/dates, not pen pals.

4.   When you meet someone in person, put the phone down (this is much easier, now you've disabled all your notifications)! If someone has agreed to meet/spend time with you face to face, you owe them your undivided attention. I'm not too much of stickler for this, but I will leave a pub or date if the other person is looking at their phone a lot. To me, it just means they're not really interested in spending time with me/are distracted by something more interesting. That's fine, but I'd rather just call time on it and go home than sit and feel like I'm talking to a wall. It really depends on the context though - I'll often spend a whole day/night with a friend and don't expect their full attention for that whole period..

5.   Don't be afraid to use the 'Work Offline' mode in Outlook and Do Not Disturb for your phone/instant messaging software. I've experimented with this and, while I personally feel that 'email' is 'electronic mail' and should be treated as such (don't expect an instant response to an email - although I always respond within 24 hours, even just to say I've received their message). Ultimately, just like we need the 2-3 hours of Deep Sleep to actually benefit from a 8 hour sleeping session, we need to do some Deep Work to actually get sh*t done. It takes on average 7-8 minutes of concentration to settle into a task and achieve 'flow' and we can only sustain this for around 52 minutes. We can't possibly saddle up for a hour of writing, research or presentation prep with constant emails pinging through, a phone ringing off the hook and five 'quick questions' coming through on Skype. It's possible, but highly unlikely, that the world is going to fall apart if you disappear for a hour. If nothing else, perhaps start a hour before, or leave a hour after, everyone else - that hour per day of concentration could actually free up hours of time during the day to be there for your team/ease the stress of trying balance everything at once.

6.   Similarly, I use my phone's feature of allowing Do Not Disturb to come on automatically during selected hours to come on during my hours of sleep. I then allow only my close friends' and family's number to actually ring my phone during those hours (you don't want to be completely unreachable - in case of an emergency). This a) reminds me that it's time for me to put the phone down and b) allows me to actually sleep with no disturbance.

7.   I don't open any apps until I'm done working. With the above measure in place, it's easy to just get up, go to work, get the day done and come back without checking your phone and getting sucked into some vortex of negative news, debates over a recent political event or something that happened to someone on Facebook you haven't actually spoken to in 10 years... This is generally referred to as 'dopamine fasting', it being that your phone is designed to spike dopamine (the pleasure hormone) by using audio-visual stimulation to keep your brain rewarding you while using it). It's no surprise, as such, that smart phone usage and mental health issues are related. Simultaneously, I fast all day (so I just drink water) and eat when I finish work. This makes it really easy to focus my app usage (and consumption of the food I need, not the food I necessarily want!) into about a hour of my day. I get everything done during this period. I'll then often take a nap afterward and get on with my evening/night - which instead of using to make dinner and watch TV until fall asleep, I can use to pursue personal interests and even secondary income streams - eating and using apps is no longer a big chunk of my day.

That's all for now folks.

Overall, I'm MUCH happier living this way than before. I'll continue to experiment and will update as I go. Truth is, this is a 21 Century problem and we're having to develop ways of dealing with it right here and now - there's not time-worn framework for managing smartphone and social media usage.

If you have anything to add, I'd be most grateful if you could your thoughts.

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Thank you for your time - Kristian Hawkes.

P.S. Check out Simon Sinek's predictions for smart phone usage in the next few years - it inspired me to write this article for you.