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My old friend Chris Hannah is trying to cut down his phone usage. I've got a few thoughts.

We're living in a world where you're considered to have a pretty good handle on your dopamine addiction if you can sit through a film without checking your phone. That's where the bar is. It's low.

But you mustn't feel too bad. You’re at a disadvantage: your brain is running ancient software in a modern environment. And billions of pounds of engineering has gone into exploiting the dopamine-phone circuit.

I wrote recently about how dopamine works with phones. The short version: your brain doesn't get hooked on what it finds – it gets hooked on checking. The uncertainty is the drug.

As an addiction, phones are closer to food than drugs. A drug addict can quit the drug entirely, but a food addict still has to eat. You still need your phone – unless you’re going to go extremist.

The goal isn't to stop using your phone – it's to stop using it badly. To aim for intentional use. To consume less junk. And to get your brain used to a bit of boredom again.

Here's some tips.

Reduce pick-ups, not just screen time

I think a lot of people focus on the wrong number. Total screen time matters, but pick-ups matter more.

Forty minutes of YouTube after dinner is a choice you made. Picking up your phone twelve times in an hour because you can't tolerate thirty seconds of nothing is a compulsion.

Constant checking does something ugly to your brain. It trains you to treat every moment of boredom as a problem that needs solving. And it makes you reach for the phone the moment anything is a tiny bit dull. Queue for two minutes? Phone. Waiting for the kettle to boil? Phone. Film is a bit boring? Phone.

I knew I was in trouble when I caught myself scrolling on my phone whilst doing a wee. A wee! 30 seconds. But I felt the need to be entertained for those few seconds.

You need to notice the desire to reach for your phone in real time and say "no, I'm going to be in this queue for two minutes, I can survive without my phone". This is the muscle you're building – resisting the phone in those small moments of boredom.

Decide before you unlock

Only unlock the phone if you have a goal, task or good reason. Like replying to a message, checking the train time, seeing your due tasks, etc. Do the job, then lock the phone. No bouncing to other apps.

Your phone is a casino built out of tiny colourful rectangles. If you open it with no plan, it will supply one for you. You will drift. And ironically, drifting always takes you to the same places: Instagram, TikTok, X – the dopamine abusers.

Get comfortable being a little bit bored

This one is the hardest, and it’s simple: do nothing.

There's a reason boredom feels so uncomfortable right now. Your brain is used to getting constantly drip fed. You've spent years filling every gap with stimulation, so silence feels wrong. Those filled gaps are where a lot of the damage lives. You need to end the compulsion to fill it.

Boredom is where your brain does its best background work. There's a reason good ideas come in the shower. It's one of the few places we haven't brought our phones yet.

Reclaim the first and last hour

If your phone is the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night, it owns more of your mind than you think. Buy an alarm clock if you need one. Charge your phone away from your bed.

I get it. I struggle waking up too. A phone is a tempting pacifier as you come around of a morning. But forcing yourself not to use it right after waking is very fruitful. I get myself some water, poke my head out the window to breath in the morning air, do 10 squats, and then get back into bed to read.

And you shouldn't be using your phone in the hour before bed simply because it's a bad way to end your day and can mess up your sleep. Watch a film with the brightness on your TV way down. Write in your journal. Or read a book (probably the best sleep aid in the world).

The social media question

Social media needs its own rules. Some people should cut it out entirely, because they're full on addicted. If that is you, just delete it and try life without it – you can always re-install it.

If you can have it in your life, give it a boundary. Like only allowing it right after dinner. Or only on the train. Thirty to sixty minutes a day of usage is fine. The trouble starts when you use it to dodge work, smother boredom, or avoid your own thoughts.

Add some friction

Turn off notifications. An obvious one, but often ignored. Any notification is a pick-up in waiting. Suppress any that aren't vital.

Keep your phone out of reach when you work, need to focus, spend time with family, or watch a film. Not face down. Not in your pocket. Not next to you like a loaded pistol. Put it on the other side of the room or in your bag.

Take the more addictive apps off your home screen. Put them on the last page of a folder on the last page of your home screen. Your home screen should be full of useful, non-addictive apps.

Set time limits for social media apps. iOS and Android have this feature built in. It's still easy to tap 'ignore'. But it's better than nothing.

Set up focus modes on iOS. Create modes like "Focus" and "Film" which only let certain notifications through or limits you to certain apps.

Log out of the social media you abuse after each session. Make yourself type the password in each time.

Only use social media in the web browser – no apps. And again, log out each time. These last two are a bit extreme. But if you're really struggling with social media, it might be the only fix.

Switch your screen to grayscale (I personally find this one a bit too extreme). Strip the colour out and your phone instantly looks like a tax return. iOS: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Colour Filters. Bind it to a triple-click of the side button so you can flip it on when you're trying to behave.

Use a long passcode and turn off Face ID for the worst apps. Face ID is frictionless, which is exactly the problem. A six-digit PIN — or better, an alphanumeric one — adds a couple of seconds of "do I actually want to do this?" before every unlock. iOS also lets you require Face ID per app via Screen Time.

Put a speed bump in front of the worst apps. Apps like One Sec intercept the tap and force you to take a breath before the app opens. It sounds trivial. But the published trial data shows it cuts opens substantially, because most pick-ups are pure muscle memory and a three-second pause is enough to break the spell.

Get a physical barrier. If you've tried everything in software and you're still losing, the Brick is a little NFC tile you tap your phone against to unlock chosen apps. Leave it at home and the apps are gone for the day.

Put better things on the phone

The phone is too good an all-rounder not to use – music, books, podcasts, news, TV, YouTube, social media, it has it all. Just stock it with better options.

My friend Chris struggles with his train commute. Here's some suggestions (that aren't just "read a book!"):

• Learn things with flashcards – Anki lets you create spaced repetition flashcards. Whenever you want to learn something, turn it into a flashcard.
• Review book highlights – Readwise is an app for highlighting passages from books. The app will help you revisit and remember the best bits of books you've read.
• Read articles – There's lots of great long-form content by the London Review of Books, New Yorker and Asterisk. I recommend the Financial Times' "FT Edit", which gives you access to their best 6-8 stories of the day for £5/mo.
• Read blog posts – There's plenty of great blogs out there. Stay up to date with them all via an RSS reader (NetNewsWire, Unread, Feedly, Current, Feedbin, etc. Learn more about RSS). Though be careful reading blogs. It's easy to click a link to Xwitter and find yourself scrolling.
• Mind games, word games, chess – Stimulating and fun.
• Write – Whether it's a blog post, a journal entry, or a Day One journal entry. I journal in a physical notebook, but the phone works too.
• Process an inbox – Email, Todoist, your read-later pile, tidy your camera roll. The dopamine of finishing is better for you than the dopamine of scrolling.
• YouTube or a film – Intentional watching beats mindless scrolling.
• Meditate – I find a busy train a good challenge for this. Or use noise-cancelling headphones if the noise bothers you.
• Social media – Despite me lambasting social media, I think it's perfectly fine to spend a bit of time on social media on a train journey. Trains can be hot and loud. Spending 30 minutes scrolling on your phone isn't the end of the world. Just set a daily usage limit. If you're a TikTok user I recommend only using offline mode, which limits you to 50, 100, 150 or 200 videos.

Remember: be a bit bored

A lot of people say they want to use their phone less, but what they mean is that they want all the benefits of less phone use without any of the boredom, silence, or inconvenience. That deal does not exist.

If you use your phone less, some parts of your day will feel empty at first. The train will feel longer. The walk will feel quieter. You will feel the urge to check something, anything, and there will be nothing there to rescue you.

Good. That is the feeling you need to rebuild a tolerance for. You are meant to have stretches of unfilled time. You are meant to stare out of windows. You are meant to wait with only your own thoughts for company.