This straightforward gadget was a life hack in disguise

It is borderline not possible for the common particular person to navigate the world with out a smartphone these days, and it is no secret that we have all come to collectively depend on them just a little greater than we must always. Positive, I wish to say it is principally about comfort, however that argument would not significantly maintain up when half my display screen time is devoted to social media apps.

Evaluating display screen time together with your friends is one strategy to dredge up some existential dread, and mine spurred a quarter-life disaster a couple of months in the past after I put it right into a helpful, dandy calculator that estimates how much time you may spend gazing your cellphone over one lifetime. If I stored up my already spectacular six hours of cellphone time a day, I might be on monitor to waste over 14 years of my life gazing my little display screen.

So I staged an intervention for myself. I enabled display screen cut-off dates (which did subsequent to nothing) and downloaded app blockers like Opal, which helped just a little extra. But when there was a strategy to bypass the boundaries with out main discomfort, I might discover it and be 4 Reels deep earlier than I spotted what I had finished. It wasn’t till the parents at Brick reached out that one of the best resolution discovered me and (fairly actually) gave me years of my life again.

What’s Brick?

Stupidly easy

Brick’s resolution is so easy it is virtually humorous: it is a magnetic puck that briefly blocks distracting apps with a fast faucet and solely helps you to again into them with one other faucet. It really works with Close to-Area Communication (NFC) know-how that forces you to make a bodily connection to each lock and unlock your system. It is the identical type of connection that tap-to-pay tech like Apple Pay and Google Pay use to finish transactions.

You faucet the Brick to lock apps, and also you faucet it once more to unlock them — like I mentioned, stupidly easy. So how is that any higher than solely software-based app blockers? It provides a bodily barrier to comfort. The Brick is magnetic, which makes it excellent for residing in your fridge. I work in an house, the place my desk is about 15 ft away from my kitchen. It is a quick stroll, sure, however the resolution to stand up from my chair, stroll over to the fridge, un-Brick my cellphone, and stroll again is sufficient friction to snap me out of the routine reflex to scroll by way of my feed.

As a result of that is what cellphone dependancy is to many people — muscle reminiscence. When one thing’s taking too lengthy to load at work, you are ready for a coworker to reply, otherwise you’re merely simply bored, thumbs and fingers begin reaching for recognized sources of fast dopamine hits, like social media. The Brick forces that normally unconscious resolution to grow to be a totally acutely aware, deliberate one, and that is normally after I notice that it’s not actually what I wish to do. The scroll would not grow to be well worth the interruption of the stroll — revolutionary.

My expertise with Brick

Revolution is not sunshine and rainbows

Credit score: Brick / Pocket-lint

I used to be extremely skeptical of the Brick. While you first look on the price ticket, anybody with a normal-sized pockets would increase a forehead and marvel if it was actually price it. However after over a month of testing, I can confidently say that $60 is a staggeringly small value to pay for the liberation Brick offers you from your self.

Once I first started Bricking my cellphone, it was uncomfortable. The withdrawals had been there. I might get pissed off with a process at work and my arms would unconsciously jerk to select up my cellphone. That is why display screen time blocking apps alone did not work — if it was solely a few faucets away, I might shortly disable it simply to get in a couple of scrolls. It was that slippery slope that might steal hours of time over the course of the day, and tear my consideration away from something I used to be doing. It was a unending cycle that Brick broke.

I believed the frustration would final without end. You would be simply as stunned to study that after solely three days, the habits had been damaged — I might even go so far as to say shattered. I wasn’t reaching for Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or any of my different blocked apps as a result of I knew it might imply an intentional stroll to get to them. Even after work, I spotted I wasn’t gravitating in direction of them. As an alternative, I might attain for my Kindle Paperwhite, bodily journal, and even my LG distant — out of the blue, the lady who “by no means had time” to look at TV was caught up on Stranger Issues.

Typically, I might even overlook to un-Brick my cellphone after work. It wasn’t till I crawled into mattress and tried to provoke “cellphone in mattress” time that I even realized. Brick was breaking my unhealthy attachment to my cellphone like I used to be throwing an actual brick by way of a window, and it genuinely feels prefer it rewired my mind in one of the simplest ways.

Your Brick can do much more

Set schedules

Credit score: Brick / Pocket-lint

You do not simply must manually Brick and un-Brick your cellphone. The Brick app helps you to create and set scheduled Brick periods with a couple of completely different configurations relying on the day.

For instance, I’ve a Brick schedule for work, the place my cellphone routinely Bricks itself at 9:05AM and un-Bricks at 5PM. I do social media administration within the mornings for small companies, so I would like to verify I can entry Instagram and Fb to verify all is nicely with any posts I’ve made earlier than my cellphone locks up for the remainder of the day right here at Pocket-lint.

My different schedule is for sluggish mornings on the weekends, since I spend a lot of my Saturday and Sunday mornings scrolling on TikTok in mattress after I may very well be going for a beautiful stroll and even emptying my thoughts in a journal. My sluggish morning schedule can solely be damaged by a guide un-Brick, so it even forces me to get off the bed and start my day.

Must you purchase a Brick?

In case you really feel chained to your cellphone, it is a no-brainer

I can not often say this a couple of system, and I do not say it frivolously: Brick really modified my life. It gave me hours of my day again, which can compound into giving me days, months, and even years of my life again to me with out even realizing it. Telephone and app dependancy is an ever-growing downside in our chronically on-line world, and Brick is among the easiest, but the simplest resolution I’ve utilized in sensible, on a regular basis life.

We aren’t all locking our telephones in a protected throughout an ‘unplugged’ retreat in Costa Rica each weekend, and Brick’s $60 is a heck of an affordable value to pay to purchase years of your life again.