This post is from a series about gaining control of your time, attention and energy in my online course, Science of Finding Flow. Read the rest here.

Unless you are some sort of superhero, you will not be able to cure yourself of your internet/device/email addiction perfectly the first time you try. Research indicates that 88 percent of people have failed to keep a new resolution; in my experience as a human being and a coach, 100 percent of people trying to reduce their screen time lapse in their attempt. So what to do if you’re struggling?

1. Don’t get too emotional about your slip or succumb to self-criticism. Instead, forgive yourself. Remind yourself that lapses are part of the process, and that feeling guilty or bad about your behavior will not increase your future success.

Instead of giving yourself a mental lashing, comfort yourself. To follow-through on our good intentions, we need to feel safe and secure. When we are stressed, our brain tries to rescue us by activating our dopamine systems. A dopamine rush makes temptations more tempting. Think of this as your brain pushing you toward a comfort item . . . like the snooze button instead of the morning jog, onion rings instead of mixed greens, or that easy taxi to work rather than the less-than-comfortable urban bike ride. So sometimes the best thing that we can do to help ourselves unplug is to preemptively comfort ourselves in healthy ways. What makes you feel safe and secure—and doesn’t sabotage your detox efforts? Perhaps you need to seek out a hug or take a walk outside.

Lapses are part of the process, and feeling guilty or bad about your behavior will not increase your future success. Share on X

2. Figure out what the problem is. This may be blazingly obvious, but in order to do better tomorrow, you’ll need to know what is causing your trip-ups. What temptation can you remove? Were you stressed or tired or hungry—and if so, how can you prevent that the next time? Figure it out, and make a specific plan for what to do if you find yourself in a similar situation again. What will you do differently? What have you learned from your slip?

3. Beware the “What the Hell” effect. Say you’ve sworn not to check your email before breakfast, but you’ve been online since your alarm went off…three hours ago. You’re now at risk for what researchers formally call the Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) and jokingly call the “what the hell effect.” If you’ve already blown your plan today, why not go hog wild? What the hell—you can begin again tomorrow, right? Wrong. The more damage you do during your technology binge, the more likely you are to slip again the next day, and the less confidence you’ll have in yourself that you can change. So as soon as you notice you’ve slipped, go back to your plan. Double down, friends, double down.

4. Rededicate yourself to your detox (now, in this instant, not tomorrow). Why do you want to make the changes that you do? How will you benefit? Do a little deep breathing and calm contemplation of your goals.

The more damage you do during your technology binge, the more likely you are to slip again the next day. Share on X

5. Beware of moral licensing. This is a potential landmine to avoid on your better days: as you notice how well you are doing staying unplugged or not working when you aren’t at work, don’t let yourself feel so good about the progress you are making that you unleash what researchers call the “licensing effect.” The licensing effect occurs when we behave virtuously and then “cancel out” our good deeds by doing something naughty. When we behave in line with our goals and values—whether it’s as large as staying unplugged for an entire vacation or as small as not talking on the phone while you are checking out at the grocery store—we ironically risk backsliding. Consciously or unconsciously, we tend to feel that healthy or virtuous activities entitle us to partake in less-good activities. Smokers will smoke more, for example, when they believe they’ve just taken a vitamin C tablet. Similarly, philanthropists tend to give away less money after they’ve been reminded of their humanitarian attributes. One study even found that after people buy eco-friendly products, they’re more likely to cheat and steal!

This post is taken from The Science of Finding Flow, an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less.

This short video is from a series about gaining control of your time, attention and energy in my online course, Science of Finding Flow. Read the rest here.

Do you check your phone first thing in the morning? If so, you aren’t alone.

One survey found that 80% of 18-44 year olds (and 89% of 18-24 year olds) check their phones within the first 15 minutes of waking up. And a quarter of those surveyed could not recall a time during the day that their device was not within reach or in the same room.

Another study found that people tend to check their email about every 15 minutes; another found that in 2007 the average knowledge worker opened their email 50 times a day, while using instant messaging 77 times a day—imagine what that might be today, nearly a decade later, given the evidence that we spend more time checking than ever before.

Clearly, we check our smartphones constantly. Is that bad?

A study of college students at Kent State University found that people who check their phones frequently tend to experience higher levels of distress during their leisure time (when they intend to relax).

Similarly, Elizabeth Dunn and Kostadin Kushlev regulated how frequently participants checked their email throughout the day. Those striving to check only three times a day were less tense and less stressed overall.

Moreover, checking constantly reduces our productivity. All that checking interrupts us from accomplishing our more important work; with each derailment, it takes us on average about a half hour to get back on track.

So why do we check constantly?

Why do we check first thing in the morning, if it just makes us tense and keeps us from getting our work done? Because it also feels, well…awesome. The Internet and electronic communications engage many of our senses—often simultaneously. All that checking excites our brain, providing the novelty and stimulation it adores. So even though disconnecting from the devices and communications that make us tense and decrease our productivity seems like a logical thing to do, your novelty-and-stimulation-seeking brain won’t want to do it. In fact, it will tell you that you are being more productive when you are online and connected to your messages than when you are disconnected and focusing on something important.

This point is worth lingering on: how productive we are does not correlate well with how productive we feel. Multitasking and checking a lot feels productive because our brains are so stimulated when we are doing it. But it isn’t actually productive; one Stanford study showed that while media multitaskers tended to perceive themselves to be performing better, they actually tended to perform worse on every measure the researchers studied.

Much of our checking and busyness, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is all sound and fury, no meaning or significance. You can sit all day in front of your computer checking and responding to email, but accomplish not one of your priorities. It may feel like a more valuable activity, because it feels more productive. But it is neither.

This post is taken from The Science of Finding Flow, an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less.

Instead of just willing ourselves not to check our phones, social media, and email so often, we need to configure our online time so that we are less tempted to check compulsively. The goal is to check email, social media, and messages just a few times a day—intentionally, not impulsively. Our devices are thus returned to their status as tools we use strategically — not slot machines that randomly demand our energy and attention.

I counsel my clients to check email first thing in the morning and in the late afternoon—and that’s it. Here is the key: During those times, you’ll need to block out enough time to get through new emails, and, if possible, all the way to the bottom of your inbox. If a particular email is going to take more than 5 minutes to read and respond to, put it in a folder (“to do this week”) and add whatever it entails to a task list. If you need X hours a day to deal with your email, make sure you’ve scheduled X hours daily. On your calendar. For real.

I check my email quickly before I begin my most important work so that I can delete or unsubscribe from junk and respond to anything urgent. I respond to everything else in my email in the late afternoon.

I actually block this time out on my calendar as a recurring appointment, and then move it around as necessary to make room for other meetings — that way I check strategically, not impulsively. I occasionally look at (and maybe post to) social media once in the afternoon, if I have time, and then I close it for the day. I respond to most texts at lunch, and voicemails once mid-morning and once mid-afternoon (between calls and meetings).

Starting Small Works

Feeling panicky at the prospect of detoxing from your email and messages so drastically? Start with very small chunks of time, or very limited spaces. Commit to unplug for just twenty minutes—at dinner, for example—or to just leave your device out of your children’s room, or do not check email before you are actually out of bed one morning per week. Often we need to give our nervous system time to adjust; we need to have the experience that our heart does not actually stop beating—or that a crisis has not erupted at work—in the few minutes that we’ve turned off our phone. (In fact, we enjoyed it! We were more efficient and less stressed!) The idea is to build internal fortitude through positive experience slowly rather than trying to massively make over our lives in one fell swoop.

This is a recommended practice from a series about gaining control of your time, attention and energy in my online course, Science of Finding Flow. Learn more about this activity by checking out Unit 3, Detox, here.