Tips For Limiting Screen Time in the New Year

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Today I will be sharing a list of things you can do to help limit your screen time in the upcoming year. This post is inspired by one of my goals for the new year, and like usual I have already started implementing some of them to help me be more intentional with my time.

I’ve been in a slump for longer than I care to admit, so I’m hoping these things will help center me and get me back on track by helping me feel more like my usual self.

1. Find a Home for Your Phone
I’m sure we have all heard the saying: Out of sight, out of mind. Fnding a home for your phone is essential if you are tying to get your screen time down. This is a place where you can leave your phone plugged in during the day and just forget about it.

A home for your phone will help prevent easy distractions, which will help keep you on task throughout the day. By not having your phone constantly on hand, you won’t be as easily tempted to check your notifications or social media any time you find yourself with a few minutes of time to kill.

2. Get a Fitness Tracker/Step Counter
I think it’s pretty safe to say that a lot of us will have some sort of health/fitness related goal for the upcoming year. I definitely do and want to prevent my fitness goals from getting in the way my goal to lower my screen time. For my birthday this year, I got myself a simple fitness tracker on Amazon to count my steps.

Now I can monitor my activity without feeling like I need to carry your phone with me everywhere, because up until that point I had been using my phone to track my activity levels. This makes me feel so much more comfortable leaving my phone in its home on my night stand or in the living room.

3. Turn off Your Notifications
Did you even know you could still do that?

Now days it seems like everyone wants an answer to their texts, DMs, PMs, WhatsApps, emails and anything else they might send you throughout the day.

Just by putting your phone on silent mode will eliminate the constant ding of new notifications, but if you want to take it a step further you can actually go into your notification settings and completely turn them off for certain apps.

You can also go into your call and messaging settings and silence people who you don’t actually want to talk to. This is a great way to help you ignore spam calls.

If type still need notifications but don’t want to be distracted by them, you can change your notification settings to deliver them silently to your Home Screen.

No matter how you choose to silence your notifications, it is a great way to increase your productivity by keeping you from constantly being interrupted by dings about grumpy cat memes or the latest TikTok trends.

4. Delete Time-Sucking Apps
The new year is the perfect time to do a digital declutter.

One thing you can do is unsubscribe from spamy emails that are just cluttering up your inbox so you don’t have to spend your time looking for important emails that are most likely lost in a sea of unimportant Sephora coupons or monthly newsletters.

Another easy way to declutter digitally for the new year is to unfollow or block people on social media that stress you out or just put you in a bad mood.

While you’re at it, you can even do a complete social media detox to reset your focus on whatever goals you have set for yourself in the new year. We all know how just spending a couple minutes scrolling at the end of the day can turn into an hour or two, which is a tremendous time suck.

One more way to reset is to actually delete some of your social media apps. Seriously, when was the last time you used Facebook for something productive? If it’s been a while you can try removing the app completely from your phone and only using it on your computer to make it harder for you to mindlessly scroll in your down time.

Last but not least, go through the apps on your phone and delete any that you haven’t used in the last year. It is so easy to download the “best organizational app ever” that your favorite social media influencer recommended but if you don’t actually use it, is it really beneficial to you? The answer is probably no and believe it or not, digital clutter can stress you out as much as living in a cluttered house.

And don’t forget about canceling the subscriptions that go along with those apps. Not only will you free up your Home Screen, but you will probably free also up some money in your budget.

5. Get a Paper Planner
I know there is a huge push for paperless everything, but there is actually research to support the benefits of pen and paper planning.

Plus if you have a real live actual planner, you won’t need to open your phone to look at a calendar, write out a to do list, or keep track of important events and appointments.

I don’t know about you but when I open my phone to use it productively it is so easy to get sidetracked and end up on social media or on Amazon shopping for things I don’t actually need.

And that is all I have for you today, thanks for joining me!

By the way if you have any other suggestions to help limit your screen time let me know in the comments. As I said one of my goals for the new year is to be more intentional and productive with my time by limiting my screen time.

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