Let’s face it: we all know that phones are addicting. We are on it all day and it’s difficult for us to put it down. The truth is that phones provide us with an endless source of entertainment, which keeps us coming back for more. What’s wrong with that you could be asking? It’s a problem because it is a big distraction to what’s really important in life, our purpose.
The Big Distraction: Phone Usage
Did you know that teens spend around nine hours a day online? Adults spend around eleven hours a day online, which is not a good look. If you take a look at every day of your life, you have 24 hours a day to spend on whatever you want. Most people sleep around 7-9 hours a day and people work about 8-9 hours a day as well. If you add the numbers up, that is around 15-18 hours a day.
You only have 24 hours in a day and you only have 6-9 hours left of your day to do something worthwhile. The majority of you spend it on your phones, going on social media, watching videos and movies, and wasting time.
You heard me when I said that your phones waste time. No one ever uses their phones for anything productive. How many of you primarily use your phones for entertainment purposes? I bet 99% of you said “yes” to this question and it scares me.
The problem lies in what people choose to do on their phones and not so much about their phone usage rates.
How You “Should” Use Your Phone
I don’t have a problem with people using their phones for entertainment purposes. I use my phone occasionally to go on YouTube and play a game here and there, but I limit that time. All of you guys do not place a time limit for activities that make you go backward in life.
You can’t improve your life by playing games on your phone. You can’t improve your life by spending countless hours on YouTube either. It depends on what and how you use it that matters.
First of all, you should use your phone to improve and better yourself. If you want to be professional YouTuber playing games on your phone, then that is valuable time spent. If you want to review different YouTube channels, then watching YouTube videos is valuable time spent.
However, the majority of people don’t want to do that. People want to waste time and basically be complacent in their life. I’ve created a quote or saying if you will about complacency. It goes like this:
Being complacent = Being weak. Being weak = Not having a purpose in life. Not having a purpose in life = What are you doing with your life?
Time should be spent on learning and improving yourself. Instead of playing games on your phone, you could listen to an audiobook. Instead of watching YouTube videos for entertainment, you could watch videos on an area in your life that you’d like to improve on.
What To Do On Your Phone
I’m going to use my own schedule as an example of how I spend my time, so you’ll get an understanding of a decent schedule. My day consists of crisis counseling, working out, eating healthy, watching informational videos, reading personal development books, and writing a book. I’m also getting into audiobooks as well to save some time.
I want you to name one activity that I do that wastes time. I bet you couldn’t name any, could you? Ever since I wanted to write another book, that’s been my main focus. I’ve cut out playing video games and spending hours on social media because I knew that I would never get anything done.
I knew that I wouldn’t complete anything of significance if I didn’t cut those things out. I’ve noticed that when people spend their time on their phones, it is because they are bored. They don’t know what to do with the “extra” time they have after they’ve gone off of work, so they look for entertainment.
Phones provide a lot of entertainment, but only short-term. All of you have experienced a time where you were watching a TV show or scrolling on social media and said that you were bored or that there’s nothing to do.
It’s at this moment where you realize that you’re wasting time and that you feel bad about it. It affects your mental health to the point where you feel down about yourself. You feel like you’re life is just average and that you can’t do anything to improve it.
What if I told you that you can improve your life? That the reason why you don’t love yourself or have good mental health is because of the bad habits that you’ve formed. Here’s how you can change it.
How To Change Bad Into Good
Like I said before, I have no problems with people using their phones or any source of entertainment. I have a problem with what and how people use them.
The first thing for you to do is to track how long you use your phone. For most, it would be around the average which is three hours. Then, I would like you to see what do you do with the time that you spend on your phone. What apps are you using in that time limit? Are these quality apps or simply time wasters?
After that, I want you to slowly take those low-quality apps and turn that into quality ones. Ones that will be useful in the long run. In the end, you will have only 1 or 2 apps on your phone that aren’t useful to you and solely for entertainment purposes.
If you’re someone that likes to go on YouTube to pass time, you can switch this with audiobooks and podcasts (The Mental Health Truth Podcast). After that, it is important for you to fit in other apps or activities that relate closely to your purpose in life.
If you don’t know what your purpose in life is, get off of this blog right now and figure it out. Everyone has a purpose in their life and should be working towards it. Once you have found your purpose, you would stop doing things that waste time. You would think very negatively of yourself if you’ve haven’t been improving as a person.
Remember, the best way to feel good about yourself and truly love yourself is by working towards becoming a better person. Wasting time on distractions won’t do that for you.
So what are you going to do after reading this? Are you going to take action or are you going to settle being complacent?
