16 Tricks to get rid of Smartphone Addiction

This is a million dollar topic at present. If we look back into our childhood, there were no mobiles but hardly we had Landline phones(which was locked with tiny lock). Then mobile phones were came into our life and took our valuable time. Now it is a trend to hold a costliest phone in hands. Here we are discussing few useful tricks or methods to take care of our time and make a better use of that time into productive things which will improve our mental health. Here i have discussed top 16 tricks that I have used and you can give a try.

While my friends were busy with their study, career plan, passion, and dream. But I was busy to run day and night in smart phone game PUBG and spend plenty of time to attack the treasure in clash of clans. Moreover, I used to check Facebook, Instagram notifications, texting through whatsApp, taking pictures, listening music, download apps, googling, changing smartphone wallpapers within few minutes continuously in my smartphone. I can't sit anywhere even 5 minutes without browsing my smart phone. I spend on average 14–15 hours time in smartphone per day.

Literally I have almost lost important aspects from life due to smartphone addiction except my strong-willed. Though it was fluctuating. Fortunately I did not lose my strong-will. I was starting to aware about my problem. I tried several times to overcome the smart phone addiction but I failed. I failed 10 times within 6 months. But I did not dishearten. I tried again and again. I have reduced smart phone addiction gradually. Finally, I am starting to become successful. Today I don't have smart phone addiction anymore. I followed multiple steps for getting rid of smartphone addiction:

1. Start from little and make it large: I have understood from my experience that I can't get rid of my addiction overnight. So, I started from small. But I had to stick with this good practice. Initially, I reduced from 15 hours to 14.5 hours usage per day. Then I gradually decreased my smartphone usage like 10, 8,7,6, 5,4,3,2 hours. I started from little but made it large by consistency, hard work and determination to improve myself.
2. Challenge myself : I challenged myself to prove myself. My life had almost ruined. It was becoming worst day by day. If I could not prove to myself let alone to prove myself to outside of the world. I took it as a challenge now or never. Whenever my old habit urged to get back my past addiction, I thought about my sufferings and mental torture due to this addiction. Thus, I got back my challenge and restrained myself to go back that vicious circle of addiction.
3. Deleting all the game and addictive apps : I used to play angry birds, temple run, clash of clans all day and night. Even I played temple run few minutes ago of starting my university semester final exams. As a part of getting rid of smart phone addiction, I deleted all the games and addictive apps from my smart phone.
4. Deactivate and withdraw myself from social media : I would love to text through Whatsapp every single minute. Moreover, I could not wait a single day to upload my photos in Instagram. Besides, Facebook was my best friend where I would like to spend time 24x7. I deactivated Facebook and stopped using WhatsApp and Instagram to reduce smartphone addiction.
5. Stopped pointless internet browsing: I was habituated to spend time on internet and pointless browsing. I opened 15–20 tabs simultaneously at different browser at smartphone. I googled at every 2–3 minutes at several topics. I have withdrawn myself my pointless internet browsing. It helped me to reduce my smartphone usage.
6. Surrender myself to God : In personal life, I have lots of atheist friends. I respect their point of view. But I pray to God every day. When I failed to get rid of this addiction, I surrendered myself to god. Prayer always has a positive power. It really worked for me.
7. Practicing Zero distraction and peace of mind : I started to do meditation and yoga. Moreover, I did visualization everyday. Visualization is a system where you can create a mental image that success of future at present moment. These things are very crucial for life. It helped me to stop distracting my mind, zero distraction and achieve peace of mind.
8. Finding my passion : I am doing job to support my livelihood. But it's not my passion, my destination is somewhere else. I have found my passion. That is writing journal everyday. Neither I am good at writing nor I earn a dollar from my writing but I love to do it. Perhaps this is a work which I can do 24 hours without getting bored and tired. My passion accelerated my efforts for keeping away from smartphone addiction.
9. Get 1% better everyday : I followed a simple rule. Getting 1% better everyday. So, I followed daily schedule, experimented on several things, learned something new everyday etc. I started to track my progress day to day wise. Moreover, I reduced addiction hours at smartphone and kept myself busy at different works.
10. The Pursuit of knowledge : When we want to get rid of one bad habit, we have to eject another good habit in our life to replace the old one. I began to read a lot instead of using smart phone. No PDF book or kindle version. I like printed books. I have read thousands of fiction, non-fiction novels, short stories self help books etc. The Diary of Anne frank, Mother-Maxim Gorky, the power of positive living-Norman Vincent Peale enhanced my pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge changed my mindset and rediscovered myself.
11. Change lifestyle : I changed my lifestyle. I go to bed and wake up earlier. I stopped late night works. I go to bed and wake up at specific time. Besides, I started to maintain strict discipline, grateful about everything, running at every morning, do 10 push-up per day. Changing life style contributing a lot to cope up with the overcoming of smartphone addiction.
12. Built new skills : I have wasted more than 10000 of hours gluing my eyes into the smart phone screen. So, Consequently, my offline communication skill was poor. I preferred to be more active in offline instead of online for enhancing communication skill. Still I am working on it and enhancing my social circle at every day. Moreover, I was trying to improve my public speaking skill, language skill, Microsoft Excel skill and so on. Still I don't achieve the advance level but I am practicing a lot. Overall, spending more time to built skills helped me to get rid of smart phone addiction.
13. Exploring Unknown places : I filled up time for not get back my addiction. So, I started to explore the unknown places my country and meet several challenges due to traveling. Numerous experiences and challenges helped me to become mentally strong. Moreover, exploring kept me busy and forgot to excess use of smartphone.
14. Use Forest: I used android and IOS app forest in my smart phone to combat my smart phone addiction. In forest app, where I can plant a tree, the tree will grow up if I stay more hours on this app. If I leave this application, the plant will die. So, this app helps to create obstacle to use smart phone indirectly.
15. Use basic phone during the productive time: Whenever I go outside of home , I have started to use normal featured phone. I avoided smartphone using. I have started to use Nokia 3310. There is no camera, apps, internet and other cool features. I use it just for communication. I use smart phone when I stay home but only limited amount of time. It helped my mind to reduce distraction. Interestingly, I started to feel better after using basic featured phone.
16. Celebrate my achievement and reward myself : It's really tough work to sustain the motivation for getting rid of any addiction. In the mid way of getting rid of addiction, you can lose your confidence. I have done something nice for myself and rewarded myself. Whenever I reduced my smart phone usage from 15 to 7 hours, I celebrate my achievement by exploring a astonishingly beautiful place in Chittagong and gifted to me a nice self -help book “Eleven minutes” by Paulo Coelho. I did all these things to continue my efforts to free from smart phone addiction and I am about to defeat my addiction.

Life is more relaxing and beautiful now without smart phone addiction. I can live the moment, enjoy the morning breeze instead of taking morning selfies and hope for a better future without smart phone game clash of clan. I don't know where I am going but I am on my way.

The simple biggest difference is that I no longer feel the urge to check my Facebook or Instagram News Feed every few minutes, and it is simply amazing how much extra time it leaves you with once you get rid of that.

I also almost feel liberated from it in a way, as I no longer feel as if I have to check my phone, but rather that it is a piece of technology that is there for me to use if I so choose.

You may feel reluctant to act on it and simply uninstall them for fear of missing out on something, but you will very quickly realise that the most important thing is your personal relationships with those around you, rather than being updated with every movement of your ‘friends’ online.

So I would advise you to simply take leap of faithby uninstalling them, and I can safely say from experience that you will not regret it.