My Free Hours
Decide what your free time holds, and where screens fit in it.
Start with 8 hours of sleep a night, 35 hours of school, and 25 hours of everything else: commuting, meals, chores, getting ready. Change any of them if your week really looks different.
What do you want those hours to hold?
Type the hours you want for each one, or use the buttons. Leave a category at zero if it is not for you.
How much of that goes to screens?
Set your total for the school week and for the weekend. The daily averages come from those totals.
Your week
Each square is one free hour.
Where does your screen time go?
Split your weekly screen hours across the things you actually open. Leave anything at zero if you do not use it.
Your Screen Time Intentions
Each square is one screen hour in your week.
Sticking to your intentions
Intentions hold when your environment backs them up. Check off at least three moves below, then follow the steps to set them up. Anything marked finish at home should be started now and finished tonight.
Make your phone less distracting
Do these in order. Clearspace first, while the room is doing it together.
Set up Clearspace3 mins
Clearspace adds a pause and a session timer before your most tempting apps open, so autopilot stops working. It is free for students through the end of college, and it is where the 9-day Project Reboot course lives.
iPhone- Download Clearspace and create an account with your personal email, not your school email.
- Select Student and complete student verification.
- Add at least one app (TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat) and add a friend for accountability.
- Go to Challenges in the bottom right of your dashboard and select Project Reboot to start the course, about 5 minutes a day.
- Download ScreenZen (also free) and add your most tempting apps.
- Watch the course content in this YouTube playlist. The course is coming to Clearspace for Android soon.
If student verification is slow on school wifi, keep going down the list and finish it tonight.
Audit your notifications4+ mins
Your phone should only interrupt your day if something demands your attention. All other notifications should go into scheduled summaries.
iPhone- Settings → Notifications. Go app by app and turn off everything that is not messaging, calls, or calendar.
- For apps you are unsure about, use Scheduled Summary so they arrive in one batch instead of all day.
- Settings → Notifications → App notifications. Toggle off everything that is not a person.
- Long-press any annoying notification when it appears and choose Turn off notifications.
Redesign your home screen2 mins
If the app is on your first screen, you open it without deciding to. Make your home screen work for you instead.
- Remove all distracting apps. On iPhone, long-press → Remove from Home Screen so they only live in the App Library. On Android, remove them so they only live in the app drawer.
- Replace them with tools and apps you want to encourage yourself to use: notes, books, camera, music, a language app.
- Add the Screen Time widget to your home screen so your daily number stays in view. On iPhone, long-press the home screen → Edit → Add Widget → search Screen Time. On Android, long-press → Widgets → Digital Wellbeing.
Turn on grayscale1 min
Color is part of what makes feeds hard to put down. A gray feed is a boring feed. Set up a toggle and use it on school nights.
iPhone- Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → on → Grayscale.
- Then Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut → Color Filters. Now triple-click the side button to toggle it any time.
- Settings → Digital Wellbeing → Bedtime mode turns the screen gray on a schedule.
- Or Settings → Accessibility → Color correction → Grayscale, and add it as a Quick Settings tile.
Manage your computer
Most homework happens one tab away from an infinite feed. Fix the tab.
Block newsfeeds and recommended videos2 mins
- Install News Feed Eradicator. It blanks out social media feeds and recommended YouTube videos while search, subscriptions, and messages keep working.
- Install Remove YouTube Shorts to strip Shorts out of YouTube entirely.
On a school-managed device that blocks extensions? Set these up on your personal computer tonight, and keep the school device clean by not signing into distracting sites on it at all.
Set up ScreenZen on your computer5 mins
- ScreenZen for Mac and PC works like the phone version: a pause and a session timer before distracting sites open.
- Set it up on whatever computer you do homework on, with the same sites you would Clearspace on your phone.
Clean up your browser home page2 mins
Your new tab page learns which sites you visit most and serves them right back to you, which turns opening a tab into an invitation to drift. Clear it out.
Chrome- Open a new tab, click Customize Chrome in the bottom right, and hide the shortcuts (or switch to My shortcuts and pin only useful sites).
- Hover any remaining suggested tile, click the three dots, and remove it.
- Open a new tab, scroll down and click Edit, then turn off Frequently Visited and Suggestions.
- Open a new tab, click the gear in the top right, and turn the content feed off.
Extra tips
Pick a replacement behavior1 min
Decide one specific thing you will do when you reach for your phone out of boredom: a walk, FaceTiming a friend, shooting hoops, reading, an instrument. Write it somewhere you will see it. The test of a good replacement is that you feel better after doing it, not just during.
Strip shortform video from your apps2 mins
- SocialLite removes Reels, Shorts, and TikTok-style feeds from social apps, so you keep the messaging and lose the slot machine.
Move group chats off social media2 mins
If your friend group plans inside Instagram or Snapchat, you have to walk past the feed just to make plans. Suggest moving the chat to iMessage, WhatsApp, or GroupMe, apps that are not trying to keep you scrolling.
Everything here, plus more, lives in the Post-Assembly Materials page.
My commitments
Check items on the left to claim them.
Your full intentions
Everything you decided today, in one place. Download it, and check back on it in a week.