I did not check my phone before 10am all week

And here is what happened! (I am sure now you are hooked :))

I have always had issues with the use of my phone. Social medias kill me of course, but also emails, news, etc. And I have a tendency to check it out first thing in the morning. Sometimes in bed when I wake up, but as soon as my coffee is cooking, this is non stop until I have too much.

Then what happens is that it is only 8am and I am already overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and not able to start working. For a long time I did put it 100% on my ADHD. If it partly true, the use of my phone early in the morning seems to have a huge impact.

So I did start by checking online different ressources to learn more about the waking up process. And what I learned is pretty interesting.

If you check your phone first in the morning or very early, it can have an impact on your mental health for the rest of the day because you did not really follow the waking up process of your body:

What Checking Your Phone Does To Your Brain

When you first wake up in the morning your brain switches from delta waves, which occur in a deep sleep state, to theta waves, which occur during a sort of daydreamy state. The brain then moves to produce alpha waves when you are awake but are relaxed and not processing much information.

Now, by grabbing your phone first thing and immediately diving into the online world, you force your body to skip the important theta and alpha stages and go straight from the delta stage to being wide awake and alert (also known as the beta state).

So I decided to try for one week to not check it before 10am. Results have been mixed because if checking my phone has an impact for sure, it does not make everything. As I say above, I have ADHD so my attention is limited in the morning, especially before my coffee. And my family is high energy. So it makes it difficult for me from breakfast to have a proper discussion of the organisation of the day. Especially on the weekends. I get nervous and anxious to concentrate.

Also we have to talk about coffee. It helps me to wake up, to be active and it really helps my ADHD. But I have to be careful on the cups I take. I have to stop before it’s too much. And it is pretty quickly too much. So imagine the nice cocktail if I check my phone while my kids are getting upset because they have to go to school and I have too much coffee… This is a disaster. And I find it difficult to lower down afterwards.

So back to this week, I did not check my phone before 10am. I took care of my family, but as soon as everybody’s gone, I felt bored and really wanted to check my phone. But it was only 8am.

In that case, you have to find an activity. It is ok to be bored and stay bored but I am not sure it is the best idea when you feel in the need to check your phone. An easier method is to do something. And do something analog. So on Monday I went walking with my dog. We had a great time. We came back and I had to find something else to do. So I did draw and write my morning pages.

Then it was 10am and I felt really calm and relaxed. An important point here as an ADHD person, I found it easy to start working.

10am, I take my phone to check social medias and emails and pretty quickly I feel the adrenaline coming up. Oh yeah, in a sense it feels good but pretty quickly it turned into a kind of speed and overthinking. Yes, this thing has a huge impact on my mental health. And not only in the morning.

Over the week, I realised different things regarding the experience:

• Checking my phone, anytime during the day but especially in the morning, puts me on a high boost, but which I can’t control.

• Not checking my phone makes me realise I have plenty of time before starting to work. And at first sight I don’t know what to do with it. But after a few days, I feel like this is a great opportunity, not to do more but to take care of me. It may be surprising but this is the feeling I get. I slow down and spend some time with myself. I walk, I draw, I write.

• Not every day is perfect or even positive. Tuesday was really shit to me. I had a really bad day even without my phone. After trying meditation and deep breathing, I did start a collage without thinking of the outcome and it did really helped me.

  

• That experiment makes me feel like I am more in control of my life. Living or being part-time offline makes me enjoy more my life and appreciate it.

I am going to continue experiment this system. No stress. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t. This is not a morning routine yet. Everyday is different, so I take it one step at a time. I just try to find a system that works for me. I am not even sure I like the word « system ».

Lately I also started to write more, almost everyday. This is probably the cheapest therapy around but really useful. Again this is taking care of myself and spending some more time with me, kind of outside of everyday life. I also do more and more collage, with or without letters. It makes me feel really good. I try to do it for me, without the need to publish and get likes. Sometimes I show them, sometimes I don’t and that’s fine :)

What do you think? Is this whole phone thing is something that talks to you? Let me know in the comments how you deal with it :)

No inspiration this week. Next week I will probably do a whole one with every artist I discovered lately, especially here on Substack :)

Enjoy the end of the week and talk to you next Friday :)

Take Care

Francis