Ever heard of a dumb phone?

For those of you born before the turn of the millennium, you probably owned one at some point. Think Nokia, BlackBerry, or old school Motorolas. They had buttons. The screens were single colour. They could make phone calls, send SMS text messages, and the most addictive thing on them was the game “Snake”.  Basically, a dumb phone is the opposite of a smartphone. It has no fancy features. Limited internet usage, such as scaled back browsers and a basic WhatsApp connection. It’s pretty much a phone but without the addictive, fun or privacy invading stuff. Sounds boring, right? But it’s making a comeback. 

Between 2015 and now, sales of dumb phones have more than doubled, with over 200 million purchases worldwide. And I can understand why. Just last week I made the decision to dumb down my own phone. I’d spent too many late nights doomscrolling through TikTok and had too many notifications interrupting my thought patterns. It all had to go. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn all gone and deleted from my phone. The only app I wanted to keep was YouTube, but then I noticed they’ve introduced Shorts too! It seems everywhere I look they’re trying to get us hooked. And it does, doesn’t it? 

How many times have you found yourself doomscrolling, with 30 minutes slipping by when you didn’t even intend to go on social media? How much of your productive waking hours are wasted staring at your phone? It’s a good question to ask yourself. It’s certainly one I was shocked to see the answer to when I looked for myself. 

Here’s a little challenge for you. Whether you’ve got an Android or an iPhone, go into your settings, find Screen Time (on iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (on Android), and have a look at how much time you’ve spent on your phone over the past few weeks. It’ll tell you not only the total time on your phone, but it will break it down by app for you so you can see which ones are really draining your focus. Then hit reply and let me know if it’s what you expected? 

I’d love to know if screens are sneaking more of your attention than you think, or if you’ve got it all in hand already and if so, how? Look at it this way, if you spend just 1 hour less a day on your phone and 1 hour more working on your business, in a week, that’s 5 more productive hours, in a month that’s 20 and in a year over 260 hours! That’s 32.5 full working days. 

What could you get done with an extra month and a half of productivity?