Now that the third week is over, I’m finding it a lot easier to leave my phone behind. I used to bring it everywhere, but now I’m more comfortable leaving it at home for short trips to my grandparent’s place (goal: be like my dad and leave it for an entire day without missing it).

And for some reason, this month is working out to be one of the months where I’m meeting up with more new people, not just friends I meet all the time. Yesterday, I met up with one of my Dayre friends for the first time. She mentioned that I seem to know a lot of people from Dayre, but I think that’s because I try to take friendships offline if possible, now that I’m back in Singapore. But it was a good reminder that you can form connections on social media that translate to offline friendships.

And yesterday’s meetup included going for a talk which was a defence of self-help and SO GOOD. I’ll try to write a review + thoughts post this week.

In other news, I found The Unofficial Legend of Zelda Cookbook on Kickstarter and since he’s a huge fan of the game, we decided to get it. I am very excited because the book sounds incredible (and I’m a sucker for cookbooks even though I don’t cook as often now) so I’m playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild right now so I don’t miss all the references in the cookbook. I never really thought of myself as an RPG person because I normally play mystery games, but this is so fun and the more I explore the world, the more I’m enjoying myself. It’s nice to try new things that are not on a smartphone and it really helps me to not miss the phone and browsing the internet. I just have to make sure I don’t get addicted to games because of this.

I suppose one more habit/hobby I could re-introduce is cooking. I really do enjoy it and we actually have an oven that we can bake in now, so I don’t actually have to go to my grandma’s house every time I want to cook/bake.

This week’s statistics and thoughts

Average phone use per day: 2 Hours a day – I’m actually surprised that this is 13 minutes lower than last week. I thought it would be higher since my Hong Kong trip had three days of unusually low use. I guess I really am making progress.

The highest usage days were Saturday and Sunday. Both are because I had an hour or two where I was waiting for a message and I ended up using my phone instead of reading. I don’t really feel bad about this becuase I would hate to miss time-sensitive messages just to make a point about my smartphone usage. But I am happy that I used my phone for less than two hours a day on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, which were relatively quiet days and not ones that required me to be on my phone.

Average pickups per day: 97 per day, which is 16 more than last week. But it’s okay, last week didn’t have typical usage patterns (or so I keep telling myself – what if Hong Kong is just what I could be like with my phone?) I apparently handled my phone the most on Wednesday and I think it’s because I was waiting for friends and just kept tapping on the phone screen.

Average notifications per day: Around 200 per day, which is about 15 more than last week. Work is work, I guess.

Top apps: Safari, Tsum Tsum, Telegram – I thought I used Tsum Tsum less this week but I guess not.

Apps deleted: -NIL-

Apps reinstalled: -NIL-

Thoughts: I saw an article on Whimn that says influences spend about 9.02 hours a day on their phones, compared to non-influences who spend about 3.43 hours on their phones. It’s an Australian site so I don’t think it’s super representative of Singapore users, but it did make me feel happy for a minute.

I am doing better at the shopping bit, although that’s probably because I’m planning a trip and all my money is going towards pre-trip expenses and things that I’m planning to buy there! I’m incredibly excited, though, since I’ve been wanting to travel more and now it’s happening (for a time). This is a trip that I will want to document so I’m trying to think of the best way to do that without getting addicted to my phone again.

Generally, I’ve been feeling a bit calmer and even though I have bad days, I’m pretty sure that I’m doing better without social media than with it. I’m leaning towards not re-installing the Facebook app but re-installing Dayre because I do like the journalling functions. I will be banning myself from the community page, however, since that is what triggers comparisonitis in me. I’m torn on Instagram – anyone know if there are any hacks to using it only a limited amount of time a day?