PicoBlog

Hey everyone,

After my first ever break since I started sending this Sunday Night Review email, we’re back. This also happens to be the 150th of these that I’ve sent 🥳 52 more emails incoming this year.

For this first one, I’m writing about something that I hope might change this year for you more than almost anything else I could write about.

But first, I need to tell you about my addiction.

(Heads up - I am about to recommend an app to you, but I have no relationship with the company and there are a bunch of other apps that do the exact same thing. I value my relationship with you much more than shilling some app, so I am not taking this recommendation lightly xxx)

I am addicted to my phone.

Particularly, late at night. I’ll finish dinner and start winding down, but around 10pm I often proceed to waste about 45 minutes on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

Precious sleeping or reading time.

I tried deleting these apps, but I’d convince myself that I actually needed Instagram to stay in touch with friends and the news, and that I needed YouTube for work. Even if I did delete them, I’d find another app where I could waste time. The news, sports, Netflix, anything that would mean I didn’t have to go to bed.

I’d want to sleep, and I’d always regret the time on my phone afterwards, but I just couldn’t kick the habit. I tried all the standard hacks.

However, I’ve made some progress recently.

Ironically, the solution came from Instagram. I got hit by an ad for an app called Opal.

This is going to sound a bit like an ad for them, but just indulge me for a minute. It’s genuinely been a game changer for me.

Because I’ve been struggling with this issue for a few years, I decided to test Opal out.

It’s a very simple app. It blocks other apps on your phone either on a regular schedule or when you’ve used them for a certain amount of time that day.

But it’s much better than the screen time limit built into iPhones, mainly because you can choose a setting where you’re not able to override it.

Now, at 9pm each night, 27 apps get completely blocked on my phone. Instagram, YouTube, Sky Sports News, emails, YouTube Studio (ifykyk), anything where there is even the slightest temptation to scroll, read or waste time.

This continues until 11am because I also don’t want to waste time in the morning either.

This one change has quite simply given me hours back in my life. I now go to bed because I just don’t have anything else to do.

Opal isn’t necessarily the best one of these screen time management apps. It’s also only available on iOS annoyingly. But the point here is not to suggest you use Opal specifically, but more to test out one of these apps and see if it can help you out.

It’s ok to need help. All these apps and content platforms are designed to keep your attention. But it’s not fun feeling like you’re losing your life to your phone. I got a bid fed up with it and I’m glad I’ve found a solution.

I don’t know why I never considered paying for an app like this before. It cost me £60 for a year. It’s supposed to cost £90 but I accidentally found a hack by going into the subscriptions thing in my iPhone’s settings and found that I could change the yearly plan to a £60 one, which they didn’t show in the app. I think it must be a mistake on Opal’s end.

Either way, to me that is a bargain. Maybe you have more self-control than I do but £90 for literally 100s of hours of my life back is a no brainer.

Anyway, you can find Opal in the app store and I think you get a 7 day free trial. Or if you want 30 days for free you can use my link here. I don’t get anything in return just some weird gems in the app lol, but if you’re interested you can check it out.

There is also a free Chrome extension where you can do the same thing for websites, which I’ve also started to make use of.

If you don’t have an iPhone or want some other suggestions, there’s also Jomo, Refocus, Forest Timer (slightly different) and a bunch of others.

I’m honestly so excited to have more hours in my day and get some of my time back in 2024. I hope you manage to do the same :)

Have an epic week and an incredible 2024!

Tintin 👨‍💻

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