I stopped using my smartphone as an alarm. My sleep and productivity improved almost immediately.

"For years, my morning routine consisted of setting the alarm on my iPhone half an hour early, hitting snooze every nine minutes, and telling myself that the only way I could wake up was by blasting my eyes with blue light. My phone alarm did wake me up - but it also got me hooked on my screen from the minute I opened my eyes."

"I was surprised by how quickly some of my digital habits could be broken. The biggest obstacle was the fear that my new alarm clock would fail to ring in the morning. Once I got past that fear, I demoted my phone even further and started leaving it outside my bedroom to charge overnight. I no longer doomscroll before bed."

"The solution turned out to be surprisingly simple: a $16 alarm clock. I sleep better As a Gen Z-er, I came of age when using a smartphone to set an alarm was the default. I spent years of my life falling asleep - phone still in hand - while messaging friends or scrolling on social media. I made my analog leap and bought an alarm clock in September 2024."

Morning routines involved setting an iPhone alarm early, repeatedly hitting snooze, and immediately engaging with screens and social media feeds upon waking. The phone alarm ended sleep cycles but enabled immediate doomscrolling, turning brief checks into prolonged exposure to short-form content and ads. Replacing the phone alarm with a $16 analog clock led to better sleep, fewer nocturnal phone checks, and reduced pre-bed doomscrolling. Fear that the analog clock might fail required overcoming before leaving the phone outside the bedroom. Once the phone was charged away from the bed, reading and journaling increased and digital habits weakened.

Read at Business Insider