I started tracking my actual phone pickups. 118 times a day. Here’s what I found.
A few weeks ago I posted about using my phone to hide from my own life. Got a decent amount of responses and was nice to know it wasn’t just me.
I decided to stop guessing and actually look at the data. iPhone has a built in pickup tracker under Screen Time and I never paid attention to it before, usually just looked at screen time.
118 pickups yesterday and the average over the past week was around 115-120. It’s kinda scary to think I unconsciously picked up my phone that many times. Maybe 5 of those pickups were conscious. I don’t even remember what I actually did on my phone yesterday. I also work a corporate job and still managed to do this lol.
A few other things I noticed:
First pickup of the day: 7:32am. Before I’ve done a single thing that matters.
Biggest spikes were right when the workday starts to wind down and before I go to the gym around 4-5pm.
Second spike was in the evening after the gym and dinner.
What I realized is that most of my pickups aren’t about wanting to check something specific. They’re about avoiding something uncomfortable. The workday stress. The activation energy to get to the gym. The general low grade anxiety of adult life.
The phone is the most available relief from discomfort. And I’ve trained my brain over 12 years to reach for it automatically before I’ve even registered what I’m feeling.
I don’t have a solution yet. Still figuring it out. But just seeing the number (118) and understanding when and why it happens has made me slightly more conscious of it this week.
Anyone else track theirs? Curious what your numbers look like and what you’ve done to reduce it successfully.