The 1-Hour Test That Reveals If You’re a Phone Addict

If you’re not sure whether you’re addicted to your phone or not, here is an experiment you can try and find out in just 1 hour.

Here’s what you need to do:

Lock yourself in a room. There should be no one around you. You need to be alone during this experiment.

Set a timer for 1 hour on your phone and keep it in front of you.

Don’t do anything — nothing — until the timer goes off.

You should not do anything. Just stare at the wall in front of you or stare at the timer.

Don’t fall asleep. Don’t start cleaning your room (like magic, you’ll suddenly become motivated to clean your room — but don’t do it). Don’t start cleaning your desk. Just sit there — do nothing.

If you can endure this for 1 hour, great.

You’re not a phone addict.

But if you can’t, you’re a phone addict.

Don’t worry if you fail the experiment. You can break your phone addiction just like I did a few years ago.

I was once addicted too. I binge-watched YouTube videos. I was not much into scrolling — I was mostly addicted to YouTube and watching web series and movies on my phone.

I was wasting all my time on my phone instead of doing something productive.

But now, I write every day. I read every day. I meditate every day. I hit the gym every day. Here is a pic.

I don’t spend much time on my phone. In fact, using my phone now feels like a burden to me.

I only use my phone for a few things:

• To set a timer when I work out, meditate, and write (even now the timer is running — I have 34 more minutes to finish this article).
• I read books. I download the books I want to read from a website called Anna’s Archive — (Enjoy! Now you can download and read any book you want).
• I interact with ChatGPT a lot. I ask a lot of weird questions.
• I open Notion if I want to capture ideas.

That’s pretty much it.

How did a guy who was watching YouTube videos for hours turn into this?

What did I do?

Here’s exactly what I did:

First, I made a strong decision to quit my phone addiction. I realized that my phone addiction was stealing all my time, reducing my attention span, spoiling my mental health, and keeping me distracted from my goals.

Making the decision was easy, but I struggled a lot to completely break my phone addiction.

The first thing I did was turn off all my notifications, including WhatsApp. I can only see who messaged me if, and only if, I open WhatsApp.

We think that if we turn off our notifications, we’ll miss something important. But it’s not true at all.

If something is truly important, people will call you.

Just turn off the notifications of every single app on your phone — you’ll realize it makes no difference. It does make one difference, though: you’ll be a lot less distracted.

The second thing I did was keep my phone out of my room.

After coming home from college, I would keep my phone in the living room near the TV stand next to the Wi-Fi modem. And then I’d go to my room.

Initially, it was extremely difficult. I didn’t know what to do in my room without my phone. It was extremely boring.

After a few minutes, I would go to the living room and grab my phone again, then regret it later for doing that.

But I didn’t give up. I made it a habit to keep my phone in the living room.

After a few days, I changed my strategy. Instead of sitting bored in my room, I started reading books and writing articles.

Here is what I understood: Don’t resist. Replace.

Initially, I tried to resist the urge to use my phone — that’s why I failed. Then I replaced it with reading and writing. That’s what actually worked.

But nowadays, I don’t keep my phone in the living room, because I’ve completely broken my phone addiction. My phone could be next to me, but I don’t even look at it.

I’m a different guy now.

You can also do this.

Just try the 2 things I suggested in this article.

See you again.

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P.S. Use your phone for reading, learning, and writing. Not scrolling, watching, and texting random girls on Instagram.