How often do you start with new intentions or try to integrate new habits only to either never start them or else have half hearted attempts?
Well… there’s a number of reasons why it’s so hard and it’s not just as straightforward.
Let’s illustrate it with phones and screen time.
The average time spent on mobile apps is four hours and 48 minutes, up 30% from 2019, App Annie’s State of Mobile report indicated.
In a week that’s almost equivalent to a full time job – I think, if my maths is right, just under 33.5 hours a week.
And that’s the average. Yours could be double that. I spoke to someone last week whose average is over 6 hours a day (42 hours a week!).
You know and I know and even my kids know that this kind of screen time impacts our mental health.
Yet – you still do it.
It’s hard to change the habit.
And there’s a number of reasons that could be contributing.
- Fear of missing out
- Need to be accepted/liked
- Poor boundaries – not able to leave email replies or not pick up calls
- Some internal pain like boredom/anger/resentment and the soothing action of the phone
- Addiction
- Need to be ‘doing’ (it’s not lazy to be on your phone researching but is lazy to sit and read a book)
- It could also be that you’re trying to create too big a shift.
Adam Grant this week on twitter shared…. “Reducing your smartphone use is better for your well-being than stopping cold turkey. Experiment: 4 months after decreasing smartphone use by 1 hr/day, people were happier, less depressed & anxious, and led healthier lifestyles. Digital moderation beats digital abstinence” (many complicated graphs were on there to demonstrate)
And it could also be that it feels BORING, too regimented and that you ‘deserve’ a break.
There’s all sorts of factors that mean you can’t just settle on a new habit and why you can’t arbitrarily instil habits.
And so much of this is because 90% of your behaviour is handled by the subconscious. You don’t even know you’re doing it. Like who on earth would anyone CONSCIOUSLY choose to spend 4-6 hours on their phone a day. Yet we all do it.
You need to get conscious about your life and what it is you want, who you need to be to get you there and what you would be doing.
I teach all this in my FREE workshop – Get Unstuck: Change Your Habits – Change Your Life. You can download it via the button below.
