Given how glued we are to our mobile phones, reducing our screen time within 30 minutes seems like a mighty task.

Here's how you can indeed reduce your screen time in half an hour:

Turn on low power mode - throttling your phone's performance is key to staying away.
Turn on grayscale mode - take out visual context from your phone.
Volume set to zero - no audio will further take you away from context that breeds longer sessions.
Turf off notifications entirely - critical apps are the only ones that can notify you; even these will be optimised.
No mobile data outdoors - stop using mobile data unnecessarily when you are outdoors.

Reducing screen time in 30 minutes is very much possible.

The goal is to take the steps above in one and never look back. Here's a deep detailed dive into diminishing hours spent on the phone.

Turning on lower power mode to reduce screen time.

If you are someone like me, it is likely that you get annoyed with devices that lag and perform poorly.

Turning on low power mode lets you experience a jagged experience which drives you into closing the app and not using core features - doomscrolling on Instagram for example.

Grayscale mode is definite in reducing screen time too!

Along with low power mode, turn on grayscale mode aka black and white mode. Colours add context to what you are looking at.

Removing these colours leave you with a device that is instantly boring. The stimulus from a barrage of vivid colours is reduced, if not eliminated entirely.

Use a shortcut to turn off grayscale whenever you need to view important work related files or graphics.

Set your phone's volume to zero.

Short form content like Reels and Tik Toks are sometimes heavily reliant on audio and SFX to elevate the value or entertainment users get out of it.

Setting your phone's volume to zero can help you reduce the time spent looking at video content with an emphasis on audio.

You can turn back audio momentarily for the following:

Voice notes
Reviewing videos if you are a social media manager.
Watching live videos or news around something important.

Turning off notifications to decrease your screen time

The goal here is to turn off notifications for apps and services that are not critical. I have turned off notifications for the following:

Food ordering and delivery apps.
Ride booking apps.
Social media apps.
Other apps that see limited use but are needed minimally from time to time.

With apps that I turn on notifications for, I simply optimise it to show me what's important.

In Asana, my notifications only arrive during my work hours. On WhatsApp, I archived groups based around casual conversations.

Such optimisations help me take control over when I see messages or respond to them.

No mobile data outdoors.

I need mobile data for the following:

Booking metro and train tickets or even a cab.
To reach a certain location using GPS and Maps.
To message friends or get event updates when I reach my location.
Making payments via my phone; eg: UPI payments via scanning a QR code in shops.

Apart from this, I do not need to keep my mobile data on at all! The biggest issue I see is people trying to fill long term travel with entertainment and therefore pointless scrolling.

A 15 minute metro ride has 13 minutes of going through Reels vigorously.

And I get it - there's some social pressure involved. Others do the same and not looking into your phone can be seen as awkward by some. Eye contact can be weird too.

Stick with me though: let's say you spend 20 minutes on your phone each day using mobile data on your travel. If you stop it, that's 20 x 365 = 7300 minutes saved! You will end up reducing your screen time by 121 hours each year. That is 5 days of a year not spent pointlessly scrolling your feed.

Extreme tips on reducing screen time.

If you are a beginner, all the options above can be pulled off within 30 minutes and you can experiment to see what works best.

In the odd event that you still wish to optimise, here are a few more aces out of my sleeves:

Keep your home screen widget free. Remove all apps from the home screen.
The big brother transfer: delete apps from your phone and use them on your iPad, tablet, Mac or laptop.
One channel approach: select one app for one intent - communication, binge watching, social media, etc.

Your home screen is a distraction.

I remember adding a small widget for Bitcoin prices on my home screen once. If the prices moved significantly, I would end up looking for answers on Reddit, Twitter, WhatsApp groups, news articles, etc.

This one piece of worry led to four different apps being fired up all at once just to see what's happening.

The same can happen with other widgets and apps.

Banking app on the home screen? Great, now you are worrying about finances late night.

Tasks widget for works? No good - you are worrying about tomorrow's tasks when you should be having fun with friends over dinner.

This state of worry leads to constantly opening your phone and going through apps just to find a short term solution.

Currently, I have zero apps and widgets on my home screen, not even on the bottom tray for iOS. Whatever apps I need I open them by dragging a finger down on the home screen to manually type and search for it.

The big brother transfer to reduce screen time.

Hmm, let me guess: the same time consuming apps on all phones. Let's taking streaming platforms for example; I had these apps on my iPhone and my iPad:

Netflix
F1TV
YouTube
Disney Plus (Hotstar)
Amazon Prime
Sony LIV

These apps existed on both devices; if I did not have on device close to me then the other would serve as a viewing station.

Essentially, the plan was simple: delete some of these apps from the phone and keep them on the iPad or use their web versions on the Mac.

This meant that I could delete Twitter, Threads, etc too.

Transfer apps that distract you to work on only one device. Prioritise what you want to watch and how you want to interact with apps.

One channel approach for digital minimalism

The idea is simple: use one app for one type of interaction:

WhatsApp for communication over Instagram, Telegram, Signal, etc.
Email for work over Slack, Asana, Monday, etc.
Netflix for binge watching over Prime, Disney Plus, etc.
Uber for booking rides over Ola and Zomato for ordering food over Swiggy.

This one channel approach can stop you switching apps that provide the same type of service and avoid decision fatigue which also adds to the screen time.

I hope these methods help you reduce your screen time significantly. If you want to share positive changes from these, please drop a message on Instagram: @anthonysmendes

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