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Comment by clement_b | Hacker News Reader

Some non-time off tips that work for me:

- Remove most, if not all notifications from your phone. Not just work-related, anything that will stimulate your brain for no good reason

- Try to leave work on time to allow other activities after. Could be ranging from going to the gym to raising your kids.

- Monitor your smartphone usage and cut it down (use something like RescueTime).

- Go to places where there is no internet connection to have some you time (e.g., a steam room is perfect to relax, or yoga)

- Sleep the right amount of hours for you

- Eat, drink well

- Remember, in most jobs, no one dies if that thing is not done today.

- Remember, if you have to work too much it's probably not your fault, but poor planning / constraints in your org. that you cannot control

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> - Remove most, if not all notifications from your phone. Not just work-related, anything that will stimulate your brain for no good reason

My phone slipped into water and is not working. I liked it, huge screen, great battery life. So I took some old one I had at home. Smaller. Terrible battery. Old Android, so many apps don't work. I can only use it for calling and texting a couple of times a day. I need to save the battery. I cannot read in bed, as it's too small to be comfortable. It's small, so it fits into all my pockets.

Oh, it's so great that I'm not going to buy a new one. I feel like I don't have phone at all. I didn't know how it was slowly changing (destroying?) my life.

Before having a phone I was reading a lot of books.

Now, I read HN too much.

Is it better, is it worse?

Certainly not bad, if, the addictive, time wasting aspects are muted / avoided.

I think not using a smartphone in 2020 is actually a massive evolution step back. Used wisely, at the right time and for the right tasks, it's a killer device.

But used for everything, all the time, it's just another form of crack.

Get your phone back, get on top of it, you'll be as happy, I'm sure.

(also, running an old Android version is quite risky on top of being annoying)

When my previous phone broke, I switched back to an old "dumbphone". It was quite lovely to charge it once a week and just forget about it for the most part.

Eventually I got a new smartphone though - especially when travelling they are a useful tool.

On my Mac, I turned off the clock in the task bar. So to see the time I have to type “date” in terminal or look at my phone’s clock. My calendar notifies me of upcoming meetings, so I can stay focused longer. That little bit of intentional change makes my coding quality of life so much better.

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