#160 - 3 hacks to get you off your phone!

Hello. Hello everybody. It is Kate, back again from hello Funnels, and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today I've got another quickie for you. And this is for anyone who, like me, has found themselves to be back in a place of being a little too addicted to their phone. I know it kind of goes in cycles or does for me anyway. And I sort of always have these moments. It's almost like sugar, right? It's so addictive and you realize that you've just, you're doom scrolling that you're, you know, you kind of look up and it's been 45 minutes and you just feel stupider and like you're wasting your life. So today we're gonna talk about three simple hacks, simple tricks that you can use to actually get you off your phone, get you back and present in your real life. And I hope you're gonna love it. So let's dive right on in.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Okay, guys, let's get real. Like, phones are amazing, right? They have given us so much that we wouldn't have been able to do previously. Like having your map at the tip of your fingers, being able to order food to your door when you've got Covid, which is what I was doing a lot over the last two weeks. You know, like, they're really, really amazing tools, but they also have created something that no other generation has ever had to deal with before, and that is phone addiction. And, and it's, it's real. And I don't think anybody enjoys spending hours on TikTok. Like, you know, you might log in and go, oh, I'll just have a look around for a few minutes. And then you look up and you're like, where did the time go? Where did my life go? And it's quite scary. I don't know how many people have actually ever looked at inside the stats on your screen usage. It's terrifying. And I don't actually feel like I use mine all that much in comparison to, you know, cause I try not to have it on while I'm working and you know, you know, I don't have it when the kids are around. It's more just sort of those couple of hours between dinner and bed. But still, like, I always feel like there's better things I could be doing. Like even just sitting, doing nothing, staring at a wall would probably be a better use of my time than scrolling through social media. So now there's not to name and shame anyone who loves using social media, who loves going down that rabbit hole. If it works for you, if it serves you, then amazing you, you don't have to listen to this episode, but this is more for the people who probably found themselves just getting. Spending a bit more time, a bit more time, a bit more time and finding it harder and harder to put the bloody phone down. And so I found a coup. Three little things that you can do. Two are free, one is paid, that I've been doing, that I've found really, really useful. So the first one that I tried is to actually put your phone on grayscale. So I don't know if. And I'll see if this is actually gonna work. We'll put a proper little thing out. But you can see here, it's gray, it's black and white. And that's a very, very simple thing you can do. You just go into your accessibility settings. So you go accessibility settings. Then it says display and text size, which you wouldn't think is what it would say when it's talking about color. But yeah, display and text size and then color filters, and you enable color filters. So you turn that on and one of the options is grayscale. And so that just means your entire phone is black and white. So. And apparently there's real science behind it that because it's not brightly colored and it sort of just makes everything a little bit less interesting. Like even watching TikTok and stuff in black and white all of a sudden becomes a little less addictive. So you just naturally want to, you know, you stay on your phone for less amount of time, you naturally don't want to pick it up as often. I was doing this for a couple of weeks. It was working really well. But the thing that really meant that I didn't stick with this particular tip was that I am an A wordle addict. And you can't play wordle in black and white because you can't see which colors, which letters are what colors. Well, you can sort of, but it just, it ruined it. So I had to then go, all right, I needed a new option. Like, this is good. This is, you know, wordle is my deal breaker. So we're now going to go and find something else. And then as Always happens with these things. I started getting retargeted by this app called Opal. I mean, there's lots of different ones out there. The Opal one I liked the look of. It's definitely not the cheapest, there are probably cheaper ones out there, but it's one of those sort of, you know, you set up different times and stuff to restrict access. Now I know that you can, within the, sort of, the default settings you can do some restrictions, but they were never that, like firmly enforced. I was, I've done that before as well and I was always pretty easily able to get around it. So the Opal one is a bit more of a hard block. I'm sure if you were really desperate, you could go in and get around it as well. One of the terrifying things about when you first sign up for Opal, and I'm not an affiliate or anything, this is not paid. This is just, literally just something I've used and found useful is it goes through and it does look at your, your screen usage and it comes up and it tells you how many days and weeks and the year you're spending on social media. And that was a pretty big slap across. Like that was a bit of a wake up call when that number came up. And then you become much more dedicated to trying to get that number down. So I found that really, the other thing that's really cool about Opal is that you can. It's got different levels of blocking. So like throughout the day while I'm working, I've got a sort of a schedule set up and I forget exactly what it calls it, but basically it means that if you need to, you know, for example, if I need to work, be able to get in and check something on Instagram, I can, but I have to wait. Like first time you have to wait 15 seconds, the next time you have to wait 30 seconds, the next time you have to wait 60 seconds. So you go in there and you just have to sit there and look at the countdown. So obviously just having to wait that little bit of time, it stops you from doing that. Just sort of reflect, you know, reflex action of, oh, I'll just check this. Which is great and that, but it still allows you to sort of, of if you need to get in, get in without having to jump through too many hoops. I found that really useful. But then other times, like, you know, before bed, it's a hard shutdown and you can't do anything. And so that's been really, really useful for me. I really, really love that app. Another thing that I've done just with the Opal. And again, this probably goes back more to my other addiction, which is currently sugar is I've gone and blocked Uber eats after. After 6pm Other than on a Friday. Cause we have. We have takeaway on a Friday with the kids. But to my husband and I did get into a bit of a bad habit over the many, many, many lockdowns we had here in Melbourne of going, should we just get some dessert? And then getting, you know, getting that delivered because it was far too easy. So now Uber Eats is gone. So then the third thing you can do, and this actually isn't your phone, but it's for those of you who find themselves just, you know, yeah, maybe you've gone and got everything shut down on your phone. That's great. But now you're sitting at your desk and, oh, I'm just going to go and click into Facebook. So obviously there's other block site ones that you can have. I personally do need to be able to get into things like our Facebook groups and stuff like that to be able to check things for work. So I don't want the whole thing to be shut down on my desktop. But there is a Chrome extension called Kill the Newsfeed. And what that does is that when you log into Facebook on your desktop, the newsfeed, the bit that you just scroll mindlessly in the middle with the ads and the updates and all that stuff is just not there. So you can see all the sidebars, you can click into groups and see everything like normal. You could go into Marketplace or any of the other things, but the actual newsfeed is hidden. And it just means, again, it just takes away that kind of impulsive. I'll just have a look through, see what's going on. It just removes that as an option. So it all of a sudden becomes just the tool that you need for if you are in have an online business, which I assume you do if you're listening to this podcast. And it just means you can get in, do what you need to do. You don't disappear down the rabbit hole like maybe you are in some programs that have, you know, Facebook groups as support. You want to be able to jump in, ask some questions, or check in on some answers you don't want to then get distracted for 20 minutes by seeing what your parents or grandparents have shared on Facebook today. So, yeah, another really, really useful tool. Again, it's totally free as a Chrome extension. We'll put the links to it down below. But those three things are things that are just super simple that you can do that's just gonna help you to get a bit more of your life back. And like, seriously, if you do the Opal thing and it tells you how many days, I think mine was like 17 days a year is spent on my phone. And that was from having about an average of under three hours a day. But even three hours a day, I'm like, that's horrific. That's so long. So my goal is now an hour a day and I'll be happy with that. Anyway, guys, I hope this has been useful. If you have any other really cool like apps or plugins or anything that you found really useful, share them below or DM them to us. We'd love to hear. Anything that's gonna help us get our life back is a win, right? So yeah, anyway, hope it's been useful, guys. Share it if it has and otherwise I will see you next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today at stealmyfunnel. Com.