I’m 28, and my phone has formed an intrinsic part of my life.
When I was little, I loved playing Snake on my mum’s Nokia. As a teenager, I distinctly remember being bought my first BlackBerry for Christmas. I’d stay up hours into the night on BBM or Tumblr, and text under my desk during lessons.
And now that I’m in my late 20s, my phone continues to be an invasive side-character.
I’ve removed both Instagram and TikTok from it, because without any self-restraint, I can lose hours to doom scrolling, day and night (I have ADHD too, so I’m prone to seeking out a quick bit of stimulation).
So, at the start of this month, I vowed that 2026 would be the year I finally stopped wasting so much time on an inanimate object.
But of course, I’ve tried to reduce my phone time before, and all too quickly fallen off the bandwagon. This time, I was going to have to get inventive.
The ‘analogue bag’ concept
Siece Campbell went viral for her ‘analogue bag’ concept — a tote filled with physical items for phone-free hobbies. Think turn-pager books, colouring or crafts.
As she says, the aim is to ‘replace the habit’ of picking up her phone, ‘rather than going cold turkey’.
Siece rotates the contents of her analogue bag each month. For January, she’s packing a subscription to The New Yorker, a news source that she can ‘thumb’ rather than scroll through.
She’s also got a sketchbook, part of a 100-day art project, a Polaroid camera, and her knitting.
‘How would I call 999 without a phone?’
Leaving the house with my analogue bag I felt liberated. I’d packed a copy of Wuthering Heights, a colouring book, my Polaroid, and some knitting.
If I still had my iPod Classic or Sony Walkman from the 2000s, I’d stick those in there too, but alas, they’re both long-gone.
On the bus, I reached for the Brontë classic, and with no phone to check, I was focused, racing through the pages of Cathy and Heathcliff’s romance.
At no point was the story interrupted by the buzz of a notification or the impulse to start texting.
There were, however, times when I was stood at the bus stop when grabbing my colouring pencils would have been, well, weird — and I’d have enjoyed a few minutes of scrolling to pass the time.
The downside of an analogue bag, though, is that I felt a little unsafe.
How would I call 999 without a phone? Plus, my friends and family can usually track my movements on Find My Friends.
The fact I have type 1 diabetes also adds to this sense of unease. My phone is connected to an app that monitors my blood sugars. If I’m not within eight feet of it, it loses the connection. And while a brief period of separation (for 30 minutes or so) is fine, I can’t wander around the centre of London for hours without it.
Overall, the analogue bag reminded me what it was like to feel a bit of mindless boredom — and with it, some proper thinking time. But unfortunately, it’s not practical enough for me.
Faff-factor: 5/5, takes a lot of pre-planning
Effectiveness: 3/5
Overall: 3/5
The ‘landline’ concept
Another TikTok technique, all you have to do for this one is hang up your phone, land-line style, like we used to in the old days.
Creator @livingmadly went one stop further and made a’phone dock’ out of clay. She wrote: ‘I’m convinced a phone docking station or some way to “hang up the phone” would do wonders for our mental health.
‘I throw my phone up in here when I get home from work, and it’s been lovely to know exactly where it is… and to not have it on me.’
‘I felt like a mother crying out for her child’
While battling a serious hangover, I chose the location of my phone dock:in the hallway, on top of a stack of books.
Desperately hungover and tired, it was easy to ignore it, and I was soon fast asleep. The days that followed, though, were a different story.
I decided not to have a hard and fast rule for the exact time I would part ways with my phone, but 8pm was the limit. It had to be docked, and put on silent.
At first, I felt like a mother crying out for her child, but a dinner with my mum changed that.
Having a physical separation between me and my device did something to my brain chemistry. I felt more engaged, and Mum and I had the most connected, in-depth conversation we’ve had in a good while.
I quickly realised just how difficult it is for me to relax when there’s a phone in front of me. Usually, when I’m watching TV or reading a book, I’m multi-tasking: scrolling on Instagram at the same time.
But I realised this was creating a sense of overwhelm, attempting to do too many things at once. Without my phone right there, I could just focus on one thing, and was able to fully relax.
I seemed more able to completely switch my brain off, and leave the worries of the day behind me once I sat on the sofa.
Since then, while I haven’t docked my phone every night, I finding myself place it onto that stack of books more and more. I think I could be onto a winner.
Faff-factor: 2/5, easy af to do
Effectiveness: 5/5
Overall: 5/5
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