How to Make Peace With Your Phone

The siren call of your phone’s latest beep or buzz can feel irresistible. Nir Eyal shares strategies for taking back some control.

Read when you’ve got time to spare.

Think about the last time you were busted for being on your phone while you were supposed to be doing something objectively more important. The shame comes in hot, followed quickly by resentment. You didn’t mean to be on your phone, after all! You were just checking the time! It wasn’t your fault that seconds later you were surreptitiously watching a video of baby ducks seeing water for the first time. Curse those baby ducks!

Our phones are portals to wonder and knowledge.But as we spend more time with these magic portals in our back pockets—and follow along with the research on this topic—we learn about how this convenience gets in the way of many IRL activities. Few understand this better than Nir Eyal, who has explored the issue from every angle, first in Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and most recently in Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

Here, he focuses on how to approach your phone with the right amount of skepticism, balance, and control. Read on as he debunks some of the more extreme ills of technology while illuminating some of the more depressing ones. You’ll also find plans for monitoring and working through your own habits—no flip phone required