Old phone, new priorities

+ More of what I’ve been up to in 2025

If you read my last post, you know that my break-up with big-tech was somewhat set into motion by an email from my doctor. However, several months before that I’d already been thinking about my attention and how to make my phone screen less addictive.

This started a little over a year ago, in summer 2024, when I saw a friend posting about getting a dumb phone. I’ve been aware of how technology aims to keep our eyes on our screens since reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, so I found this concept of a dumb phone interesting. I looked at the model they had purchased, as well as looking into what else was available, but ultimately decided that there are enough times and places where I need to use a phone throughout the day, so I wouldn’t be able to make the best use of that investment.

Not to worry, thanks to targeted online advertising (*cringe*¹) I came across an ad for a minimal phone app called Minimis². Not only does it skin your phone operating system to give it a minimal design, it intends to also discourage you from using addictive apps that you set in your “dopamine drawer”.

At this point I still had social media apps on my phone and I wasn’t ready to give them up entirely, so at times I would click through³ despite the discouraging messages and actually found that aspect of the app off-putting enough that I stopped using it as intended (by bypassing the Minimis app to go straight to the social media apps).

Fast forward to early 2025 – when I had decided I’d had enough of being the product for big-tech and had committed to deleting my not-so-free email and social media accounts – I was still very much in the habit of picking up my phone regularly, so I put that energy towards setting up, and then fine-tuning, the settings for the Minimis app as well as my phone in general.

This process paired nicely with deleting my various online profiles, as I not only removed apps for accounts I no longer had but, I also deleted all the apps that I no longer used or wanted to have (tracking me) on my devices.⁴

What I found is that, without the need to put any apps in the dopamine drawer⁵, the discouraging messages no longer pop up for me, and I really enjoy using the Minimis app and appreciate the minimal look of my old phone.

It’s kind of like when you organize a space and it becomes a nicer place to spend time. The difference is, I now find it easier to be more intentional with my phone. If I pick it up to check messages, I’m don’t get sidetracked by some other notification and forget why I picked it up in the first place. There’s just also less to do on it without all the apps intended to keep me scrolling a feed.⁶

As I’ve been deleting apps from my phone, I’ve also been getting files better organized (on both my phone and PC). I had been paying for additional storage with at least two services because I had felt overwhelmed with how to manage the files on my device and it had just been easier to pay for additional storage when I had reached the initial “free” quotas.

For instance, I had files in multiple drive apps on my phone, now all the important ones are in one place. Photos are now regularly backed up off of my phone which has freed up phone storage and I no longer need to pay for additional “cloud” storage for those accounts.

This has not only saved me the money I was paying but more, as I was nearly exceeding the limits of what I had been paying for and was beginning to get messages to increase my storage before reaching the next limit.⁷

The savings from not paying for the additional storage for those two accounts has helped to offset the costs of the privacy focused services that I have switched to.

It’s definitely been a process and not something that I could just switch over in a day or two (in large part because I’ve been working on multiple fronts – deleting multiple email accounts [including one that I’ve had for nearly 20 years], compiling multiple old drives with over 20 years of photos into one place where they are now backed up, re-designing my phone set-up, etc.).

I had a goal of getting most of this done before a couple of my paid accounts renewed and I’m ahead of schedule (hooray!). I’ve been chipping away at it now for about 9-10 months, as time permits, and already it has been worth it. Not only do I feel lighter from (to overly simplify it) not having so much content served to me by algorithms designed to make money from me, but I also feel better about having my various files more organized (I’ve been looking at photos I haven’t seen in years and it’s been bringing me so much joy – I may now have a new obsession with looking through old photos).

One inspiration for me throughout this process has been listening to the Off The Grid podcast by Amelia Hruby. A friend sent it to me shortly after I announced that I was leaving social media. It’s technically a business podcast but I find the guests and topics so interesting that I binged it all summer even though I don’t have a business. I had already deleted my social media accounts by the time I started listening, so I didn’t download her Leaving Social Media Toolkit but, based on what I’ve learned through her podcast, I’m sure it is worth checking out if you’ve considered leaving but are unsure where to start.

Have you taken undertaken any of this *waves hands vaguely to the text above*, if so, what has your process looked like?

1. I’m laughing at the irony here, as I now use a search engine that doesn’t have any advertising (and I can honestly say I don’t miss it, despite the fact that targeted advertising did help me in this instance). ↩︎
2. When I downloaded the app it was in Flight Test mode (not yet available on the main app store) and I took a chance and purchased the lifetime subscription, as it was a lot more affordable than buying a dumb phone and I do like to support people who are creating useful products and technologies. It is my understanding that now that it is out of early access, it is available as a yearly subscription. If that’s not accessible for you, there may be other apps that do something similar. ↩︎
3. Has anyone ever stuck to the “screen limits” for addictive apps that can be set up through iPhone settings? They certainly didn’t work for me, I got into such a habit of clicking to get more time that I barely even registered I was doing it. The discouraging messages from the Minimis app definitely gave me more pause (and worked better) but, for me personally at that time in this journey, they didn’t land very well. ↩︎
4. I’ve also been deleting apps etc. from my computer. ↩︎
5. As I’m transitioning through this process, I could see putting an app like “mail” in the dopamine drawer. It’s one of those apps that I find I still habitually will pick my phone up to check and now that I’m in a different mindset about it all, the discouraging messages might not rub me the wrong way. ↩︎
6. That being said, I do find I’m more likely to read long form articles now than I was when I was in the habit of scrolling feeds and skimming posts. ↩︎
7. It is surely by design that it is so much easier to simply pay for more storage than it is to get files organized but it can be done. ↩︎