With everything online and mobile, it’s easy to see why so many people are attached to their cell phones. It allows them to be connected to people, email and the Internet 24/7. But what is the cost for this convenience? Spending too much time on your cell phone not only takes time away from your family and friends, but it can add up to some costly bills each month.
Six Tips For Reducing Cell Phone Dependence
If you are thinking of breaking the cell phone habit, you are in luck. Here are some tips to cutting back the cell phone dependence.
1. Gradually Lower Your Cell Phone Usage
Start by turning it off a few hours a day and see how you adjust to that. If you are fine without it, increase the amount of time you turn your phone off, moving to a couple days, then to a week or longer. Eventually you may realize that you do not need to be connected at all hours of the day.
2. Reduce The Minutes In Your Monthly Phone Plan
This one may give you more time away from your phone and save you money. Look at the amount of minutes you are currently paying for and drop your plan down to the next lowest. This will help you cut back on the amount of time you spend talking on the phone, but will also reduce the amount you pay monthly. Warning: you will need to pay close attention to the actual minutes are you using. If you go over your allotted minutes, you will be charged for each minute and that gets costly very quickly.
3. Switch To A Pay-As-You-Go Plan
This is another tip that could save you money. With a Pay-As-You-Go plan, you will need to purchase a certain amount of minutes before you can use the phone. This will help you stick to a certain amount of minutes each month, as well as a certain budget.
4. Cut Back On Extras
Do you use your phone mostly for talking? Cut back on our text message plan or your data plan. Do you use your phone mainly for the Internet? Reduce your monthly minutes and text messages. Cutting back in other areas will help you use your phone less in those areas, and will hopefully lead to using it less all around.
5. Think Of An Emergency Plan… Sans Cell Phone
In an emergency, a cell phone can be valuable. But if you are trying to rid yourself of your phone, you will need to come up with an alternative to your cell phone for emergency situations. You can opt to use a landline or office phone of you have access to either, or you can use a digital calling service via the Internet. A caveat to this tip: you may want to keep your cell in the car for road emergencies. This is not to say that you should use your phone in the car, but leave one in the car and turned off just in case of an emergency.
6. Utilize Internet Phone Services
There are more and more applications that allow you to make calls through the computer. Skype, Google Voice and Vonage all have phone calling options. If you are paying for Internet service anyway, this may be a good option for helping you cut out your cell phone.
Five Tips For Coping With The Phone Separation
Once you have started to use your cell phone less, how do you cope? For many people, having a cell phone on them has become such a habit, they feel lost without one. Here are some extra tips to help you cope with the phone separation.
1. Keep Your Hands Busy
If you are one of those people who are used to constantly having your phone in your hand or your pocket, it will help to replace it with some other object to hold. Start carrying around a notepad, book, MP3 player, or some other object similar in size and weight to your phone. Choose objects that will replace the functions you use on your phone. An MP3 player will replace the music player, a notebook will replace the notes function and a digital camera will let you still take pictures on the go.
2. Make All Your Plans Ahead Of Time
And make them detailed. If you have everything set-time, place, date-before heading out to meet friends, you won’t need to break out the phone and make extra phone calls once you leave the house.
3. Tell Everybody About Breaking The Habit
Tell your friends, family and colleagues that you are breaking the habit. Unless you let people know of your plans to go without your phone more, they will continue to contact you on it as normal. Give your contacts alternate ways to get in touch with out so that they will not feel that you are out of reach.
4. Find Activities To Replace Your Cell Phone Time
If you used your phone to play games, listen to music or surf the Internet, you will need to fill that time with other things to do or you will go back to using the phone. For example, if you normally spend your work lunch hour playing games on your phone, find a book to read during that time instead.
5. Spend More Time On You
One of the best ways to keep your mind off using the phone is to busy it with something else. Take the extra time to work on you. You could join a gym, take a class or learn a new skill. Even spending more quality time with your friends and family is a great way to keep yourself busy.
Cell phones are easy to get addicted to. They provide entertainment and a means to stay connected all the time. However, they do come at a price. They are costly to use each month, and can even take up too much of your time. Follow these tips to help cut out the cell phone habit, and eventually survive without a cell phone.