The No SmartPhone Game
The rules:
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At the start of the week (or earlier) you can enter this week game by writing in this thread: “I am comitted at minimizing my smarphone time this/next week”. or “I’m in this week.” or something similar. You can decide if the week starts on Sunday or Monday and you can use your own timezone.
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When the week has ended, you can post your results by making a screenshot of your weekly ScreenTime report (I think this is called Digital Wellbeing in Android).
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When everyone committed has posted his results, (or if you are too ashamed too post, thats okay, just tell that you have quited), I will calculate the top 3 of that week.
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You can not compete in this conquest if you already completely stopped using a smartphone. I would like to congratulate you on your impressive achievement, and feel free to inspire us with the strategies you used!
The first game starts at 13th or 14th of June, depending on your week start setting. Feel free to participate!
Week 24 participants:
- Panndict
Why?
I think that many here are interested in the Mudita phone because they notice what kind of negative effects a smartphone has on them. Or maybe you are even willing to admit that you are “addicted” and you came to realize it is not so “smart” to walk the street with a “bottle of beer” in your pants.
Personally, I tried using no smartphone for a week, switched to the cheapest Nokia phone available, and the effects were pretty dramatic. I am diagnosed having ADD, but without smartphone, I notice much less of the typical ADD “symptoms”.
There is one problem though. I think most people here are planning to use their Mudita phone, next to their smartphone. Because there are some things that are just very useful on your smartphone. For example, Calculator, Todo apps, Music apps, Notes, Google Maps, Uber, Internet Banking, PingId for authencication at work, Opening a car from a car rental app, Weather checking, Opening hours for a shop, Ordering Take Away, etc.
When I did the “one week” challenge I told all my friends, and that makes things a lot easier, as they understood and helped with my “digital handicap”.
However, when your plan is to only do useful stuff on your smartphone as in the list above, and have the Mudita or other dump phone always connected, I think you will fall in the following trap at some point.
After you have checked for the weather, you go check the news just for a couple of seconds, and then you got to watch just one video on youtube related to that news item, and before you know it, you spend way more time on your smartphone than you planned to.
I have done this no smartphone week a couple of times. And usually the second week, I can keep my smartphone usage below 1 hour a day, only doing “non-addictive” useful activities such as writing notes, Google Maps, making a shopping list etc. But then I gradually start using “addictive” apps, more and more, until at some point I just stop using my dumb phone, and have my smartphone with me all the time.
Therefore this game! Feel free to join whenever you feel to cut back on your phone usage, and want some extra motivation by expressing your commitment here. Maybe your goal is to gradually remove your smartphone from your life, or you may just want a reset on addictive tendencies.
Don’t feel demotivated if you are not in the top 3. If you can cut back your smartphone usage from 8 hours a day to 5 hours a day, that is an impressive achievement. The only real competition should be between you and your past week you.
There are no compromises in this game. So you can not substract your Google Maps usage from your score, as it is an “useful app”. The point of this game is finding alternatives for the things you do now on your smartphone. Can you open Google maps on your computer and memorize the route and pay more attention to directions along the way? Maybe print out the navigation instructions? Buy a physical map? Etc.
It would be great to use the Mudita phone of course for this game, as it provides an alternative for calling, sms, calculator, notes, music etc. But in the meantime I would suggest buying the cheapest dump phone you can get, and wait eagerly. 
