Making your smartphone your mindfulness friend

[Peter]

I always felt that my smartphone was my mindfulness enemy. It is an addictive attention magnet. I even thought of getting rid of my smartphone altogether.

But I thought of a 'system' that made the smartphone my mindfulness friend (in a way). Thought I share it here.

I've bought a MI fit fitness tracker (€15 smart bracelet). I've set it up so it will vibrate on every notification, and I've trained myself to do a mini mindfulness meditation (about one minute) every time the bracelet vibrates. In effect the vibrations come pretty random throughout the day. After a short while it created a real Pavlov effect, so I never skip the mini meditations.

EDIT: It also trains my patience, because I only allow myself to look at the notification after I've done the mini meditation. And of course you don't need the bracelet. One can just use the notification sounds of the phone. But for me the vibration of the bracelet provides a stronger trigger.

NoticeAndAccept

[quirky_friend]

Cool.
I've removed a lot of things off my phone in the last few months but have found that I can do a "light" session of practice on the bus if it is guided so I have tracks preloaded. Also I'm tracking my progress on doing practice using goal setter

[Gareth]

An excellent idea.

I do the same thing with door handles. Every time I touch a door handle, I come back for a few breaths and check what's going on.

NoticeAndAccept - Do you have a Twitter handle that I can use to 'advertise' this topic?

[JonW]

Someone gave me a smartphone recently, an iPhone contraption. I chucked it straight in the bin. Seemed like a mindful thing to do.
Jon

[Peter]

An excellent idea.

I do the same thing with door handles. Every time I touch a door handle, I come back for a few breaths and check what's going on.

NoticeAndAccept - Do you have a Twitter handle that I can use to 'advertise' this topic?

Nice idea also, I will try that too. Need to be careful though that it doesn't backfire and become an OCD thing

I don't have a Twitter handle that I like 'advertised', but you are free to 'advertise' the topic of course.