What I learned from turning off my phone for 3 days

Is excessive phone usage affecting your relationships and causing work-related stress? Here's what you can do.

In today's society, many of us struggle with setting personal boundaries when it comes to our phones. Our devices have become the epicenter of our work, social lives, and entertainment. While I cherish the capabilities of my phone, I have noticed that my phone usage has lead to higher than normal stress levels, tendency to be triggered by social media and being disconnected from those around me.

For these reasons and many more, this weekend I decided to switch off my phone for a complete three days. Here’s what I learned:

1. Exhaustion

Within the first 12 hours of being phone-free, I experienced unexpected exhaustion. I was at a music festival and took four different naps throughout the day. Although the scorching heat and early arrival were contributing factors, the absence of my phone allowed me to engage in meaningful conversations and shut my eyes whenever I felt like it. At times where I’d normally scroll on my phone or be working, I was instead letting my body decide that it needed rest.

My first of four naps.

Takeaway: Habitual phone usage before sleep, immediately upon waking, and during breaks was contributes to overall exhaustion. Learn to establish better boundaries for phone usage. See what happens!

2. Unhealthy Obsessions with Seeking Gratification

My time away from my phone also exposed my unhealthy obsession with checking the same notifications or updates over and over. I often will check sales numbers, likes on a post and many more updates over and over throughout the day. When numbers are doing well, it leads to gratification until the next time I check. When it’s a slow day, it always has an affect on my mood. While I deeply care about my brand and my clients' success, constantly scrutinizing sales numbers, ad performance, or TikTok analytics throughout the day does not actually change performance! Your eyes are not magical, and looking at your phone more won’t magically lead to more sales or virality on a video. When I turned back on my phone almost every metric for both my clients and my own work was actually better than on days where I’m glued to it.

Takeaway: Reducing unhealthy monitoring habits can save you a lot of time and lead to less stress.

3. Improved Relationships

I have been struggling a lot with feeling very out of the present moment and disassociated when I’m around my loved ones. Being off my phone helped me realize that my phone was a big part of the problem. From the constant monitoring, triggers or exhaustion all described above, my phone usage has a tendency to have a negative impact on my everyday mood which has lead to worsening relationships with my loved ones, especially my girlfriend. In this instance, I had taken a full three days off my phone, yet when I’m around my girlfriend I probably don’t go 30 minutes without getting distracted by something on my phone.

Caught in the act. Me at the beach with my girlfriend focused on my phone instead of her.

Takeaway: If I’m on my phone 24/7 and it’s always accessible, I’m gonna be drawn to using it and continue to be less present with my loved ones. I have to start setting time where my phone is not near me and I’m intentional with creating time for the people that I love!

4. Less Stress, Fewer Triggers

I found myself a lot less triggered and stressed. Often when I scroll throughs social media, certain things make me feel like an imposter and like I should be doing more with my life. It leads to negative spiral related to my body image, work, relationships and so much more. These thoughts were hardly existent when I wasn’t on my phone!

Takeaway: With less aimless scrolling, you will find yourself a lot less triggered by negative thoughts and be more in tune with your emotions.

Checking Out to Check In

Sometimes we must disconnect in order to reconnect. My experiment of turning off my phone for a few days has taught me valuable lessons. While I can't permanently abandon my phone, I plan to allocate designated periods when I switch it off or keep it away, work on my excessive monitoring habits and establish more healthy boundaries for how much time I use my phone for leisure. If you, too, feel that excessive phone usage is affecting your relationships and causing work-related stress, I encourage you to try this approach. It might just bring more smiles to your life and the lives of those around you. Thank you for reading another blog on Smile with Sander! Please subscribe and share.