Try your phone on grayscale
Ben Kuhn's latest (a) is a gem. My favorite bit:
The little red dot says 5. Nothing else is red. That makes it easy to see. That’s good. Red is for danger. Missing a notification is dangerous. It might be one of the good ones.
You engage with the red dot. It goes away. That’s better.
The best is when someone likes you. If no one likes you, it’s boring. That means you need to engage more. If you engage more, people like you more.
It’s very easy to like things. You just engage with a button. That’s good. Your friends are liked, so they are happy. You are liked, so you are happy. Everyone is happy. The charts go up.
If you want a different relationship with your smartphone, I recommend turning its screen to grayscale (instructions here (a)). Also you should turn off all notifications except for text messages & calls from people you know, but hopefully you've done that already.
It takes less than a minute to do. Try it out for a week, and if you don't notice an improvement, it takes less than a minute to switch back. (I believe people should try things out more, in general.)
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