How to Avoid Using Electronic Devices

Put electronic devices away. Leave your phone in the other room when you are doing your homework or cooking, or whatever you are busy with. Having the device at arms reach is just a distraction. You will get more work finished, more efficiently, if you remove that phone from the room entirely. As for your computer, you may need it while you are doing some of your work, but for many tasks, you don't really need it handy. So if you have a laptop, stow it elsewhere when you are busy. This way maybe you will stop running to it every time you think about checking in with your Tumblr contacts. If you have a desktop, pull yourself away and busy yourself in some other room of your house.^[1]

Get outdoors. Go out of your house. Establish a daily walking routine or go to the gym.^[2] Play sports. Walk the dog.^[3] Take the kids to the park. Turn that phone off while you are out and about. Wait until after your daily exercise before you use electronics. This will increase the amount of time you are outside being healthy, and will decrease the period of the day when you are stuck to those screen devices of yours.

Have a None till Noon. Make a hard and fast rule that you will not pick up your phone or your computer until after lunchtime. This way you know you can attend to your email in the afternoon, after you have already addressed all your morning priorities. Those emails can wait a few hours, and you will get your important things done before you even see those. Many of the messages will just be distractions from your own goals, so make sure you get your own things done first, during your electronic-free morning.

Clean up. Do some of that housework you have been putting off!^[4] Or organize your office space. Remember that monster under the bed, or that junk pile in your desk drawer? Well get those gloves on and kill it! Now's a good time to do all that stuff you had promised yourself to do. Again, delay using your electronics until after you have done the dishes, or until after you have vacuumed the floor. Wait until your bathroom is thoroughly scrubbed before you open that laptop screen. Clean your home to the core!^[5] Handle every piece of mail. It's a great boredom killer and it'll distract you from that craving of your iPod.

Read. Read all kinds of books that interest you. Subscribe to a magazine. Take the paper. Make library visits a part of your weekly routine. Choose books on various topics and set aside an hour for reading each day. If you are still in school, make your teacher proud and start reading some classics. You'll find that the movie played in your mind is way better than Netflix!^[6]

Do errands. Go shopping or anything you like. Maybe join a club, and meet people with similar interests to you. Start a hobby.^[7] Play tennis, or start playing the bagpipes! There's more to the world than Flappy Bird! The more you get involved in real-life activities, the less you are going to be having your nose stuck in that phone.

Leave a site when bored.^[8] Sometimes you are on Facebook, and you can't pull yourself away, because you are looking at yet another post, even though you are tired and need to get some sleep. And you are probably looking at a conversation between the second and third cousins of some acquaintance you hardly even ever knew way back in grade school. These are not important posts for you to read! X out the page. Close the computer. Go to bed. While you are at it, just log out of Facebook. This will make it a little more inconvenient to get back into Facebook the next time you think about entering a time-sucking site like that.^[9]

Remove applications. Log out of, or uninstall, most applications you may have active on your phone. Pinterest? Flickr? Facebook? Candy Crush? No. You do not need to be roaming around people's boards and pages and playing daft games whenever you happen to have a free minute. Take one of those applications off your phone today. Remove another tomorrow and another the next. Pretty soon you will not have anything left on your phone except the essentials. Those games and apps which are not on your phone, cannot distract you from the important things in life.

Enjoy life without electronic devices. Do whatever you like. Make arrangements with friends at least a couple of days each week. See play. Go hear some live music at a coffee shop. Enjoy your life. Embrace not having texting thumbs, or headaches. Smile and enjoy what the world has to offer.

Write a letter. Write to your mom. She will be so pleased to get a card or a letter from you!^[10]