Five ways to increase mindful use of your phones

Our phones are an incredible tool that allows us to stay connected with anyone at anytime and have immediate access to information whenever we want. However, from great power comes great responsibility. In fact, this ever present connection can overload us with information. In this page you find five different ways to mindfully use the phone, minimise information overload and therefore maximise our mental health.

1. Notification digest

Instead of responding or checking each notification as it is received, you can try the following. Set aside one specific moment of the day, for instance 5pm, to digest all notification of the day. This will also take much less of your time overall.

2. Do not grant access to your attention

Ninety-nine percent of all times I download a new app, I get the pop-up “This app would like to send you notifications”.

Clicking allow is a very easy action which takes 1 second, but it has constant repercussions on the attention span by sending notifications. So, be mindful of what you grant access to your attention.

3. Silence notifications

Because of the previous tip, it may also be a good idea to go to your phone settings and check which app has access to notifications.

Here, you can disable all non essential notifications. For example, I keep only the following

  • Phone notifications (That’s what the phone was originally for, so it would be funny to turn these off)

  • Messaging apps - e.g Whatsapp

  • Emails - you can silence these too for extra silence

4. Grayscale mode

You can set your phone in black and white. This will make it much less appealing to use.

If you have an iPhone you can easily activate this mode in the following way

Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text size → Color Filters → ON → Greyscale

5. Home Screen Environment

Being mindful of the apps you choose to keep on the first page of your home screen is important because they are the first things you see when you unlock your phone.

If you have an app you would like to use less, it is better to move it in another page, or even hide it in a folder. Eyes don’t see, mind is not tempted to use.

You can keep only essential apps on this page and leave the rest for another space.

Marco Caspani

Last update: 13/05/2025