It may seem harmless to check your phone during a commercial, but I realized that’s not the case.

Because when I picked up my phone during a commercial, I’d rarely put it back down when the show came back on.

Once I turned my attention to my email or social feed, it quickly captured it and drew me away from what I actually intended to watch on TV.

A funny thing happened when I sat down to watch TV (or do anything) and knew I wasn’t going to use my phone during that time —I realized I didn’t even need to have my phone near me.

When I watch TV now, I keep my phone on a table across the room so I’m never tempted to pick it up.

Turns out the only thing stronger than the allure of social networks is the allure of not getting up off the couch.

I turn off all notifications on my phone — there are no dings when someone likes my tweet or sends me an email.

Notifications are poison. If you enable them, you’re asking your phone to interrupt you.

I believe in the value of “getting lost on the internet” and continue to do so.

But now, when I pick up my phone to do some random surfing I set an end point for the journey before I begin.

For example, when I decide to browse Twitter, I might also decide to do so for just 20 minutes.

Setting an end point protects my time and ensures a little random surfing doesn’t turn into a huge time suck.

Have you looked at people waiting in a line lately?

They’re all checking their phones.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it’s definitely not an intentional use of your phone.

So I made a concerted effort to stop doing this and found the value in it far outweighs whatever I got from checking my phone while in line.

By following this rule, I send a message to myself that I’m in control of my attention as opposed to ceding it to my phone any time I’ve got a moment to spare.

If the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before going to sleep is to check my phone, what kind of message does that send to my brain about the role of my phone in my life?

One of the simplest things I did to switch up my phone habits was to create a buffer zone— in the morning and at night — when I don’t use my phone.

For me, I don’t pick up my phone until I’ve finished breakfast (which typically means I’ve been up for at least 30 minutes) and stop using my phone at least an hour before going to sleep.

After I post this article, I’m going to be tempted to check and see whether people like and share it over the next hour or two. The same is true for anything I post on social media.

To counteract this pull, I made it a rule to log off after posting something and not check my phone for a while.

It’s a conscious effort to avoid getting drawn into my phone in an unnecessary usage pattern.

By the time I went through checking a couple email addresses, my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Medium accounts, enough time went by that I felt the urge to go back to the beginning of the cycle and check them all again to see what was new since I last checked.

That’s not a great habit.

So I created a rule and allowed myself to go through the cycle and check each platform only once per phone use session.

And when I’m done, I’m done.

One of the reasons I don’t like the concept of a full digital detox is because it’s an all-or-nothing scenario and I don’t believe that’s how you ultimately create positive, lasting change.

My effort to be more intentional with my phone hasn’t been perfect, but it has helped me start to make lasting changes in my habits.

Like all things, it’s a work in progress and that’s OK.