80% of people check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up. [1]
Of those a further 80% check their phone before they do anything else. [1]
83% of people use their phone as an alarm clock. [2]
Those numbers being almost identical can’t be a coincidence.
I’ve nearly always been in that 80%. For certainly most of my adult life the first thing I’ve done when waking up is check my phone and specifically check social media. It used to be Facebook, then Reddit, Instagram and Twitter got added to the endless scrolling morning ritual. What starts as “just 5 minutes to see what’s happening” very quickly turns in to “oh shit I’ve been scrolling for half an hour”.
For me it even got to the point that I would set my alarm 30 minutes earlier than usual just so that I had time in my morning routine to scroll social media.
While 30 minutes doesn’t sounds too bad it sets your mindset for the day ahead. You start your day with a lazy morning in bed mindlessly scrolling social media, searching for those little hits of dopamine that it injects in to your brain. This sets your mind to be searching for the same dopamine hits throughout the day.
A few months ago I started making a concerted effort to not get on my phone in the morning until all of my morning routine was done, until I was showered, dressed and ready for the day. This worked all of about 3 days before reverting back to the scrolling habit.
I knew I needed to get my phone out of reach in the mornings until I was out of bed at least. I put my phone on the other side of the bedroom, forcing me to get out of bed to turn the alarm off. On paper this is great, it gets you out of bed and gets some blood flowing but there were two issues with this. Firstly, I wore my Apple Watch to bed to track my sleep and could turn the alarm off from there, and secondly, the temptation of a nice warm cosy bed was just too much. I’d get out of bed, grab my phone, turn the alarm off and jump straight back in to bed commencing the regularly programmed scrolling.
I needed to stop using my phone as an alarm. Even if I put it out of the bedroom the first thing I’d be doing when I wake up is grabbing my phone to turn the alarm off.
So I bought an alarm clock!
Mind blowing I know.
Having a standalone alarm clock meant I could now get my phone out of the bedroom completely. Putting my phone in the kitchen at night created a huge barrier to the immediate scrolling. Although I could go and get my phone and jump back in to bed, I had no reason to, it was no longer buzzing a loud alarm that I needed to turn off.
Furthermore, I got an alarm clock without a snooze function. One alarm, that’s it.
My wake up routine very quickly, well literally overnight, went from alarm off —> scroll for 30+ minutes —> shower, dressed, more scrolling and so on to alarm off —> shower, dressed and so on. This mindset shift from scrolling for dopamine to productive action was genuinely phenomenal. I suddenly felt awake, productive and ready for the day straight out of bed.
I noticed the impact immediately on my screen usage too which went from an average of close to 5 hours per day down to around 2 hours per day. My days became far more productive, I no longer needed to work in to the evening to finish tasks as they were all done by 6pm.
Getting an alarm clock changed my life.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
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[1] https://www.nu.nl/files/IDC-Facebook Always Connected (1).pdf