10 small habits that helped me build a better relationship with my phone

miracle diets don't work for phone addiction either

I've been struggling to keep up with our offline challenge.

Not because it was difficult, but because I no longer felt the need for it. Over the past few weeks, my relationship with my phone has been exactly as it should be—smooth, transactional, and non-dependent.

The main goal of this challenge was to go through it together with my subscribers. But once I stopped needing it, that’s when I started struggling with it. I didn’t want to be hypocritical or write just for the sake of it—the most important thing to me when it comes to this blog is transparency.

I’ve realized that my healthy relationship with my phone isn’t the result of a challenge or a set of strict rules to follow each day. Instead, it’s been about gradually building better habits over the past few months—slowly, but surely.

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I've been talking non-stop about my digital detox journey here, sharing some of my new habits and everything I’ve been doing to heal my phone addiction.

But in this post, I want to lay it all out—all the things I’ve done over the past few months to get to where I am now. These habits take time to build, of course, but I’m proof that they work far better than quick fixes or short detoxes.

It’s like dieting, right? If you try a fast miracle diet, you’re more likely to experience the rebound effect and gain the weight back as soon as you stop. But if you build healthy eating habits and stick to them over time, the results won’t just last—they’ll be solid.

Source: Pinterest

So, here’s the list of habits I have been building since I started this journey four months ago, when my phone usage made me feel out of control and completely trapped:

1. Deleting Instagram and TikTok. You can read more about it in my offline diaries series, as well as my most recent update on my relationship with Instagram in this note:

2. No-phone mornings. A game-changer. Every morning, when I leave for work, I turn off my phone so I can start the day with just my thoughts. It’s routine and I know the way perfectly, so those forty minutes are mine before having to spend eight hours straight staring at a screen.