[jaapz]

Changing your habits is hard, especially when it is really easy to fall back into the old habits.

Making such a rigorous change of replacing the phone with other stuff might help some people with not relying on a smartphone as a habit. Then when the muscle memory in your mind is finally broken, you might move back to a smartphone for these tasks.

I have been working on stopping going to some sites on the web, for example continuously looking up news every few minutes. I now block those sites using uBlock. And I still catch myself automatically opening a tab and typing in the url (which is then blocked) when I need to wait for something.

Doing something like this helps learning self control, but breaking ingrained habits is hard (especially when the device is trying to keep you addicted).