Rebuild the home screen so the default is boring
Start with the first thing you see when you unlock the device. Move everything that pulls you into a loop — social apps, news, video, shopping — off the first page entirely and into a folder a swipe or two away. Leave the first screen for things that are genuinely tools: camera, maps, messages, calendar, notes, transport. The point is not that a folder is an impenetrable barrier. The point is that the extra two seconds are often enough for you to remember what you actually picked up the phone for.
Then turn off badges — the little red numbers — for everything except calls and direct messages from real people. Badges manufacture urgency for things that are never urgent. If a notification cannot interrupt dinner, it does not need a counter on your screen. And switch the phone to greyscale in the evenings if your device allows it; a feed rendered in grey is a strangely effective appetite suppressant.
Give the gap something to do
The failure point of most phone cutbacks is not craving, it is emptiness. You remove the scrolling and you are left standing in a kitchen with a vague, itchy feeling and nothing in your hands. So decide in advance what fills the specific gaps you know you have. For me those are the kettle boiling, the bus, the twenty minutes after the dishes, and the first ten minutes in bed. Each one got a replacement: a stretch by the counter, a paperback permanently in my bag, a radio programme, and a notebook on the bedside table where the phone used to live.
