Multiple phones to reduce screen time & stress

[Jasmine1970]

Advice please, I want to get some extra phones to help me get a break.

My situation is that I run a few small businesses, teach adults, post of social media, am an artist and have two grown up sons. I have lots of people making contact with me, so using the phone is essential but feels like a bother and I just can't get away from it. There are lots of unnecessary messages. I'm also trying to kill the phone addiction. When stressed I reach for it and overall it dampens my creativity.

I plan to get a second and maybe third phone so I can take breaks my main phone. I'm going to be employing an admin person/ PA one or two days a week and would like for them to have my phone on those days. I thought I could do this 'handover' by switching off mine and them have a clone phone they can use. This way they can easily check social media notifications, deal with easy messages and make posts for me.

I'm also trying to reduce multitasking, by having specific days for each business so I'm switching activity less (apparently a cause of stress).

Is this a good plan? Has anyone else done this and how has it worked and how has it helped?

I'm a part-time artist and need true time out to focus on being creative. For this my plan is to have a second smart phone I can film and access all my photos on, which I use in my work. I need the ability to create films and photos for instagram etc, without the risk of me consuming social media.

I've heard that a lot of successful artists/musicians/writers don't have phones and I imagine this means their assistants have the phones. It seems today the key to getting anything done is to cut right down on social media consumption. My plan is to carve out certain days without the phone.

Because I'm a visual artist I often use my phone camera to film and document as I go for later social media posts, and use my bank of photos on my phone/iPad for reference when I'm working. I like to listen to radio, music, podcasts and audiobooks which helps my concentration. However, I want all this without the possibility of scrolling the internet. I haven't worked out how I can do this as they don't allow you to disable the internet search engine. Any ideas??

MY PLAN ..

Phone A = MY WORK PHONE - 'work' number - original telephone number for 3 businesses, my teaching and all my friends and family

Phone B = CLONE WORK PHONE FOR MY PA - 'work' number - for my executive assistant. So at certain times I can switch mine off and they can switch this one on, so it would be just like handing it over to someone else

Phone C - ART STUDIO PHONE - new 'home' number - smart phone, no apps, no Facebook or instagram, good camera and logged in to the same photo library for creating apps. I would like this phone NOT to have an internet browser but I understand it's impossible to disable this. (?? ) I'll also use radio, audio books and music. I'll restrict who I give this number to, only my sons and close family and friends.

Phone D - BRICK PHONE - 'home' number - my two sons and mum and best friend to call and text me

Love to hear what has worked for others

Thanks

This seems a little over complicated, expensive and stressful to me. It will take so much headspace to keep track of all that. Are you proposing that your family would be given 3 different numbers for you? How do your sons know which number they're supposed to use at any given time?

Most smartphones are set up for dual SIM with a second "slot" for an eSIM. I would have thought it'd be simpler to just one phone but different SIMs for personal Vs business etc. Then business contacts just have your business number, family and friends have your personal number (and immediate family have your business number for emergencies if applicable).

Why does your proposed "phone C" even need to have a number or be a phone? Wouldn't a tablet be better for those tasks? You could still sync media to other devices when you want to upload content elsewhere.

I'm sure there must be a better way to work with a PA than to have a second "cloned" phone. Surely your PA just has limited access rights to your inbox so they can monitor your emails and send emails "on behalf of Jasmine1970" and then you set up call forwarding from your business number to your PA when you want to disconnect?

Also if part of this is about managing a screen addiction, some of that comes down to you breaking habits and interrupting yourself with new behaviours. I don't think having the extra temptation of 4 phones to switch between is going to reduce your screen time or addiction.

Every time you catch yourself about to doom scroll, what alternative activity would you want to replace that with? Pick one to start with and every time you catch yourself going off task, you interrupt yourself and pick up the other activity. Depending on your device, there will be other settings to help you such as "digital wellbeing" in your device settings which can have app limits, focus mode, do not disturb, and other settings you can also use to change your behaviours and the ease with which people can demand your attention when you want to be left alone.

Keep it simple.