Most plans to reduce screen time start with a promise: I’ll use my phone less. It usually lasts a day or two, because a promise asks you to make the same hard choice many times a day, and the phone only has to win once.

The plan below works differently. Each step takes a decision away from the tired, in-the-moment part of your day and moves it to a calm moment, where you make it once. You don’t need all eight steps at once. Doing the first three well is a good start.

Step 1: Find out where your time goes

Start by looking at a normal week of your actual usage. On iPhone, open Settings, tap Screen Time, then See All App & Website Activity. Look for two things: the two or three apps that take the most time, and the times of day you use them most.

Be specific. “Too much social media” is hard to fix. “Instagram in bed and TikTok at lunch” is something you can build a rule around.

Step 2: Pick one goal you can check

Choose a single change that’s specific enough to know whether you kept it. “No social apps after 10pm” works. “Use my phone less” doesn’t, because there’s no line to hold.

Start with the hour that bothers you most. For many people that’s the time before sleep or the first minutes after waking, because those hours tend to set the tone for the rest of the day.

Step 3: Turn the goal into a rule that runs on its own

Set the rule up once, so there’s nothing to decide when the moment comes. This is the most important step, and it’s where most plans fall apart, because they depend on you remembering.

Two kinds of rules work well. A schedule locks apps during a time window on the days you choose, such as 10pm to 7am. A daily limit gives an app a budget of minutes, so you can use it on purpose until the time is spent. In Screeny, both are enforced by iOS through Apple’s Screen Time frameworks, and they lock and reset without you touching anything. The daily limit warns you at 80 percent, so the lock never comes as a surprise.

Step 4: Lock the apps that feed the same habit together

Group the apps you use in the same way and lock them as one. If you only lock Instagram, the habit tends to move to TikTok, then to Reddit, then to the news. In Screeny, folders put all of them under one set of rules, so the scroll has nowhere to go.

If you only need your phone for a few things, such as calls, maps and music, turn it around. Only allow mode locks everything except the few apps you choose.

Step 5: Add friction to the way back in

Getting past a lock should take a few seconds of real effort. One tap is too easy, and you’ll use it without thinking. A short, deliberate step gives you time to notice what you’re doing.

With a physical key, an NFC tag, a printed QR code or a barcode on something you own becomes the way to lock your apps or open them early. Put the key in another room. Getting back into a locked app early then means standing up and walking somewhere, and most of the time you’ll decide it isn’t worth it.

Step 6: Change the space around your phone

Small changes to where your phone lives help more than you’d expect. Charge it outside the bedroom and use a separate alarm clock. Move the apps that take your time off the home screen, so opening them takes a search instead of a reflex. Turn off notifications from apps and keep the ones from people.

Some people also switch the screen to grayscale (Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Color Filters), which makes colorful feeds less inviting.

Step 7: Fill the time you get back

Decide in advance what you’ll do in the moments you used to scroll. An empty gap tends to fill itself with the phone again. Keep a book where you used to charge your phone, download a podcast for the commute, and have one or two things you enjoy that don’t involve a screen.

It doesn’t need to be productive. It just needs to be easier to reach than the phone at that moment.

Step 8: Check in once a week

Look at your numbers once a week and change one thing. Weekly is often enough to see a trend, and rare enough that a single bad day doesn’t throw you.

Screeny can send a weekly report on Sunday, and its Stats tab compares your daily average with the period before. The ghost also suggests changes, such as tightening a limit or adding breaks. If something isn’t working, adjust the rule instead of dropping it.

When you slip

You’ll have days when you break your own rules. That’s normal, and it doesn’t undo the plan. Keep the rules in place, look at what happened, and if the same slip keeps happening at the same time of day, add a rule for that time. For the late-night version of this problem, our guide on how to stop doomscrolling goes into more detail.