Recently my four-year-old daughter Ami said to me “this is me-and-you time, it’s not looking-at-your-phone time, Daddy.”

Ouch.

Do you spend more time than you’d like staring at your phone? It reminds me of an old Leunig cartoon of a father and child watching a sunset on TV, while missing the sunset that’s happening outside their window.

Here are a few things I’ve done (I seem to be a list-writing mood a bit lately) to help spend less time looking at my phone:

Uninstalled Facebook completely. I noticed in the early COVID-19 days I was started to get a bit addicted, wasn’t getting much value from it, so I’ve gone cold turkey.
Logout of email. I don’t want to look at email on my phone … but occasionally I need it there. Having to log in means I don’t just end up reading emails on autopilot.
Leave my phone in a different room. When I sleep I charge it somewhere else, and when I’m with my girls I try to do the same.

And clearly I’m still a work in progress on all this!