E26 - 10 best hacks & apps to reduce your screen time in 2025

Hi everyone,

My name is Stephan and this is my story of how I became The Attention Master.

If you want to be more in the moment and live a more present life in 2025, then episode 26 is for you. Let's dive in!

Here is what you are going to learn today:

• 5 things to change in your phone settings.

• 5 app features that will blow your mind.

• Why screen time isn’t the golden nugget to change your life.

You asked for them, now you get them. My top 10 list of technical changes you can make on your phone to resist distractions.

1. Replace notifications with badges

2. Turn off Raise-to-Wake 

3. Hide apps from home screen & app library

4. Automatic red light filter at bedtime

5. Use the screen time widget

6. Use a morning schedule blocker

7. Extract chats to respond to messages outside of social media

8. Block feeds

9. Live timer to see time spent in-app in real time

10. Use app limits

Let’s jump into them one by one. I will explain to you why they matter, why these hacks work and how to set them up: ⬇️

1. Replace notifications with badges

It matters because:
We need 23 minutes to reach a deep state of work, but the average adult reaches for their phone every 3 minutes, driven by a notification every 2 minutes.

Notifications are seen as the bad part of your phone. That's why mindful people turn them off completely. And that's a big mistake. Because it fuels your FOMO. Now, every time you want to know if someone has messaged you, you have to go to WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram and the like.

Solution:
LockScreen + banner notifications off, badges on for messages.

Why it works: This setup allows you to have the best of all worlds: not being distracted by messages, not missing them, and not overusing apps because of message FOMO.

Setup instructions:
https://www.kapwing.com/c/7r63BbkM8R

2. Turn off Raise-to-Wake

It matters because: