On and Off the Phone

If you’re anything like me, Covid has sucked me into the depths of my phone. Between doom scrolling and fantasizing when I’ll be able to see friends again, I’ve been trying to distract myself. At first, I thought I was trying to distract myself from the volatile political landscape or the restrictions Covid has placed on our lives. However, I found myself hooked to social media to get the latest news which only served to feed into my worries and fears. Even after recognizing that my phone wasn’t necessarily my friend, I still found myself peeking at my screen to get the latest updates from Facebook or the newest headline from the New York Times. This article is how I transformed my phone to a tool and how I’ve used it to keep sane throughout this pandemic.

I, as well as many others, are addicted to their phones. They’re just such lovely bits of futuristic technology that they’re hard to let go. If we try straying away from our screens for too long, we feel cut off from the rest of the world and may begin to worry that we’ll be left behind. I don’t think we have to drop our phones in order to have a fulfilling day. We just need to reform this spectacular tool to work for us, rather than against us. I have done this through the use of several apps to cull my time on non-productive activities and encourage rewarding habits.

For those who just want to know what apps I am going to talk about, here is a list of 4 apps that have helped me be and feel so much better. I have also listed activities off my phone that work hand in hand in with those apps. These are just general methods, activities, and programs I’ve used to help me in my career, schooling, and hobbies. Feel free to email me your suggestions and tailor the following to your own needs.

On the Phone:

Habitica

Wokamon

MoodFlow

Forest

Off the Phone:

Reusable Sticky Notes

Journaling

Creating a Mantra

First, let’s explore what we can use on our phone to help us with those quarantine blues and spring forward in whatever endeavour we so choose. My favorite app for the past year and a half has been Habitica. This nifty little app gamifies your goals and habits. For completing tasks, you receive gold, experience points, and mana for spells that help you defeat monsters and receive loot such as pets and armor. These tasks can range from the mundane such as washing your dishes to finally writing that article or story you’ve been putting on the back burner since October. A lot of Habitica is self-directed and you adjust the rewards for each task you create making you accountable for what you do and do not complete each day. If setting up goals for yourself seems daunting, then I suggest joining any of the multiple guilds. Each guild has a certain theme or task in mind. These guilds are for students, for fitness nerds, for Dungeon and Dragon players, for writers, you name it, there’s probably a guild for you. Each of these guilds have challenges, habits, and support groups associated with them. Once you join a guild, these challenges will be uploaded to your profile so you don’t have to make them yourself. Some of the guilds I would recommend are: Be Kind to Yourself and the Imaginary Journey Challenges guild. The Be Kind to Yourself guild reminds you to do just that. It gives you tasks such as complimenting yourself at least once each day, spending a few minutes organizing your space, and asking for help when you need it. This guild even rewards you for just getting out of bed which can be difficult when you work from home and technically don’t need to leave the comfort of your sheets. The Imaginary Journey Challenges guild gives you multiple journeys that you can undertake and sets certain mileages as markers from popular works of fiction or real world hiking locations. I am currently following Bilbo on his journey in The Hobbit. I just passed the 921 mile mark or The Desolation of the Dragon. Talking about walking, that leads me to my next app recommendation.

Just because our phones are basically attached to our hips, doesn’t mean we can’t take them with us to adventure and walk. Exercise has been proven to give us more energy and brighten our spirits. On a physical level, it makes rest easier and releases endorphins throughout our body. On a mental level, it gives us a goal and perhaps an excuse to get out of the house. There are multiple apps to encourage us to exercise. Zombie, Run! is a fun zombie apocalypse drama that encourages you to walk by progressing the game’s plot. There is also Pokemon Go that allows you to catch pokemon on your walks and battle at gyms. Wokamon is not as well known and is nice if you don’t need all the bells and whistles that the aforementioned apps provide. Through Wokamon, you adopt little creatures and watch them grow as you gain experience through walking. By tapping the wokamon and opening chests, you get crystals that let you buy and upgrade outfits for your wokamon. These both make them look cuter and help you gain more experience for your walks. You then level up your wokamon which lets you obtain more crystals from tapping them and opening chests. It’s a simple formula, but sometimes that’s all we need to encourage us to get moving. It’s also rewarding to see all the wokamon you have collected and to watch them grow as you level up. Use whatever and however many apps you need to keep you moving. It really does have a greater impact on your mood than you would believe.

Keeping track of our habits and exercise are steps in the right direction of achieving better wellbeing. However, your mood and how it shifts throughout the day is also an important aspect to understanding yourself better and keeping sane. MoodFlow helps you keep track of your moods and stick to routines. The scientist side of me also enjoys this app because it correlates your mood and various emotions with your level of sleep, what activities you were doing, day of the week, and much more. With this app, I was able to find out that Wednesdays and Sunday are days where I feel the most down and stressed. I also found out that cooking and crafts helped alleviate some of that stress and that alone time helped cause some of it. This app also has a lot of flexibility and lets you adapt it to what you want from it. It’s also a simple gorgeous app that lets you see via color and statistics how your day, week, month and even year has been.

Finally, these apps let you use your phone to make you a more productive and sane individual, but sometimes you really do have to ignore your phone and focus on what is in front of you. For that, I recommend Forest. Forest is an app that rewards you for focusing on a task and staying off your phone. You set a timer for how long you are going to stay off your phone, and in turn, the app grows a tree or shrub in your virtual forest. If you interrupt this timer, your plant dies and leaves a skeletonized version of it in your forest. At the end of the day, you see how your forest has grown and how successful you were at focusing. This app also recently gained a setting so that you could still listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks, etc while you worked without impacting the timer. This has been a lifesaver for me and leads me to things you can do separate from your phone screen.

These next suggestions, for the most part, are the real life equivalents to what the apps above provide. I won’t dwell on them for too long, since I already talked about their importance and utility above, but they’re worth mentioning in some detail.

My first recommendation: reusable sticky notes. I bought some reusable whiteboard sticky notes and they’ve helped me form a vision board. Habitica helps me build certain habits, but when it comes to the big goals I have for the day, week, or year, seeing them on my wall is a little more satisfying than checking on my phone. My sticky notes have reminders for work, for chores, and for myself. I have 10, and when I complete one task such as vacuuming, I think of something else to fill in the now vacant space. This constant renewal of jobs combined with some long-term goals give me something to look forward to each day.

When we are on our phones constantly, we can lose track of the time and forget all of the things we’ve accomplished in the day. Journaling, even if it’s only a paragraph, helps build our memories and reflect on our day. I have had depression for many years and it’s been a constant battle of imposter syndrome combined with a forecast of gloom and despair. I’d keep a journal off and on to write my feelings, but never something consistent until 2 years ago when I started going to therapy. Since then, almost everyday, I write about a page in my journal. At first, it was hard. It was difficult to articulate how I felt and remember what I did. However, with more practice, I began to remember all the things I accomplished in a day even if all I was able to complete was folding the laundry. It reminded me that I was still moving forward, that I may feel that I’m at a standstill, but there are things changing around me and about me everyday. On the days where I don’t get to talk to my therapist, my journal serves as a reminder and a counselor. Days pass by, we grow, and we move forward.

Finally, the last bit of advice I have to give, is to make yourself a mantra. You can find a quote that has particular meaning to you. You can make your own simple one worded motto. Sometimes a song is what you need to keep going. When the apps aren’t working and the days seem pointless, keep your mantra. For me, I find a song each week (sometimes month) that helps me keep going even though every fiber of my being wants to give up. One song in the past has been, “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman, specifically the lyric, “What’s waited till tomorrow starts tonight”. Another has been the Mitchiri Neko March which is just a cute little animation and tune comprised of a cat marching band. Some weeks, a song just doesn’t cut it and I have to just repeat to myself, “Keep moving forward” or even simply “I can”.

I hope you have found this article useful, and if you wish to reach out or perhaps give me more recommendations, you can email me @ [email protected].

All the best,

-Sarah