I met a really cool guy named Rasmus who is making lightfriend.ai, which makes light/dumb phones that only have camera, text, and calling, smart through sms. This is really fucking cool and if there wasn’t so much friction and ecosystem cost to switching I totally would use it, but I prefer to keep my iPhone and make it as dumb as possible, and this blog post is a guide on how to do exactly that. The suggestions I make are principally for IOS, but I imagine there are equivalencies for everything I mention on Android.

  1. Grayscale

    You should make your phone grayscale so that you decrease the dopamine you get from using it. As stated by nat, you should be careful about where you get your dopamine from. I unfortunately have the convienient triple-power button toggle which goes back to colour mode on my phone for instances where I want to show someone a photo and don’t want to go three layers-deep in settings to switch it, but the trouble is that I often forget to switch back to grayscale afterwards. Therefore, if you want to be truly hardcore, then don’t give yourself an easy way to reactivate colour.

  2. Notifications

    I only have notifications for messages, phone, maps, and other apps which don’t spam you and are essential, everything else is turned off, major distraction unblocker.

  3. Homescreen

    I removed all of the apps from my homescreen to prevent the brainless habit one gets of just existing and then out of nowhere having their phone in front of them scrolling on instagram (I don’t have any social media apps on my phone, but this one is so obvious that I do not make it a list item), doom scrolling is made harder by having no apps on your screen when you pick up your phone because you’re bored. With no apps, you need to go to the app library by swiping right and then searching for the app if it’s not in the recommened list, which once again adds friction to bad habits.

  4. Tap to wake

    Why does this exist? There is a power button, tap to wake is redundant and makes it easier to have an excuse to check your phone.

  5. Rise to wake

    ditto.

  6. Screen time limits

    I have individual website-limits set to 5 minutes for: x, youtube, etc., and down time, which blocks all apps after 10 pm. Limits are tricky because I have failed many times by just typing in the password to continue doom-scrolling, and one strategy my sister uses is to let her friend set the password so she doesn’t know, which is quite hardcore. The theme here is consistent with techniques which make nasty habits harder but not impossible, unless of course you do not know the screen time password. On the topic of youtube, my friend Hugo has a rule where he must take notes while watching a youtube video, which forces you to only watch videos that are worth note-taking and to watch less overall since it’s not fun to take notes while watching a video.