14 simple changes for healthier tech habits in 2025

Simple practices to reclaim your life

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This is an updated and revised version of a post I sent out one year ago. I believe it’s more relevant now than ever.

Last year the firm Statista reported that people average 13-plus hours a day of using some sort of media, and it’s trending upward. Statista is a reliable firm, and I can’t get this stat out of my mind. We probably know how we got here (smartphones, email, texting, social media, binge-watching shows, news, Wikipedia…) but how can we pull ourselves out?

Of course you have better things to do than use media for most of your waking hours. But you can’t split your mind into partitions of using media and trying to do something else. If you’re doing an activity that’s automatic, like walking, then yes, you can listen to music at the same time. But if you want to do something that requires your attention (and is meaningful, like playing a game with your kids) then you can’t also be texting on your phone. Nor can you listen to a podcast and pay attention to another person speaking. We occupy not only most of our waking hours on media but sometimes our bedtime hours too. Is there any way to get out of this trap?

Yes, you can start changing your habits in small, manageable ways. My vision is that to change the culture, we all need to contribute with small behavioral adjustments. We are all interconnected in a vast social web, both online and offline, where one person's actions influence others. By being role models, our small changes can inspire others, creating a ripple effect. Over time, these tiny shifts can gradually transform the culture, one step at a time. It may seem idealistic, but I’m convinced it’s a meaningful place to start.

Here are some practices that I designed for myself last year that still work for me. They’ve made me calmer, less anxious. I’m not advocating stopping media consumption like a digital detox (though you can try it), but rather I’m urging us to be more discriminate in what we do on media. In this new year 2025, I’d like to share these practices with you.

1) Read something inspiring every day. It can be a poem, an essay, a story. It can be ancient (like from Lao Tzu), from the last century (like Keats), or something very modern (like Alice Walker). Try to find something in hard copy but if you can’t, it can be online. It can be a quote, an essay, a letter from your mother—it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s inspiring for you.

2) Practice reading long form content. When we read long form content, we give ourselves time to deliberate, and can connect it to our current store of knowledge. It’s how we can best learn things deeply and increase our knowledge capacity.

3) If a child can see you, even in a public area, avoid using your phone for texting, checking news, browsing social media, etc. If you need to get on your phone, step away to use it. Children model their behavior on what they see adults doing, and your actions send a powerful message. For example, in Germany, if the light is red on a crosswalk even with no cars around, if children are present, no one crosses. This unspoken agreement represents a commitment to model responsible behavior. Children are astute observers of the world and quickly internalize the norms of the behavior that’s around them.

4) If you have the chance to be with your child, then truly be with them and don’t be on your device. This can be in the living room, the supermarket, on a bus, on the playground, sitting in the park, or walking down the street. I wish I had done this much earlier. Don’t put your child on a device either when you can be with them.

5) Start your day affirming what your emotional goal for the day is. How do you want to feel at the end of the day? Be specific. Peaceful? Fulfilled? Productive? Loved? Then think of a plan to get you there. For example, if you want to feel loved at the end of the day, then spend time with your family or friends.

6) Start your day affirming what your task goal for the day is. What do you want to accomplish by the end of the day? If can be something small, like reading an article, or can be something larger, like making progress on a project. If you’re working on a large, complex task, then break it down into smaller components and break these down into smaller chunks. Then define your goal as completing one of these smaller chunks.

7) Take “a bath” in nature every day. This means walking or spending some time in a place where you can observe nature—without using your device. You can observe nature in your backyard, a park, or looking at your neighbor’s flowers. If you live in an urban environment, find a patch of nature: a small park or even a tree. You might have to seek it out, but when you do, treasure it. There is plenty of nature even in New York City’s concrete Financial District jungle. Research shows how a short time in nature can destress and replenish us.

8) If you go on social media, then keep probing yourself to see if it has value for you. If it doesn’t have value, then leave. The more you do this, the easier it gets. I spend about 10 minutes a week on social media and that works for me.

9) Be aware of when your mind is starting to feel fatigued and take a break. Look for signals like when your mind starts to wander, you keep rereading a sentence, or the content is just not making sense. Or, maybe you’ve been staring at a blank screen and just cannot come up with an idea to complete your sentence. When this happens, take a break--not a break where you do your email, but a real break where you get up, move around, look out in the distance, take a walk, or chat with a friend. This can help you restore your spent resources.

10) Detach from work in the evening. We need time to psychologically detach from work, which means no email, Slack, phone calls or texting that is work-related. Yes, you might earn your colleagues’ ire. But let them know what your boundaries are, and chances are, they’ll respect that. You will be able to better psychologically reattach to work the next day. You’ll get better sleep and will be more ‘present’ at work the next day, i.e. more mentally involved.

11) Get off your screen well before you go to bed, one hour is a minimum, but ideally it should be two hours or more. The blue light will interfere with your sleep.

12) When you first lie down at bedtime, think of three things that day that made you happy. If you can’t think of any, then find them. You will. It doesn’t matter if they seem trivial—no one else will hear them. End your day on a positive note.

13) Don’t feel that you have to fill every second of your time being productive. Understand that this is a habit. Relax. You don’t have to read or check your smartphone to fill up your time. You don’t have to try to learn new vocabulary or read one more article. Give yourself permission to just hang.

14) Read something to challenge your mind each day. Reduce the time you spend reading news, doing email, watching TV, or scrolling through social media, and replace it with reading something every day to challenge your mind. It doesn’t have to be long—a short passage is enough. Don’t fret if you don’t understand it right away. You can read the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next. One day it will eventually sink in, you’ll finally get it, and it will be totally worth it. If you need a suggestion, try reading Spinoza. It takes work but he’s mind-blowing.

I hope these strategies help you experience a healthy and rewarding year in 2025. May this be your best year yet.

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You can learn more about how we can have a healthier relationship with technology in my book Attention Span. The paperback version will come out in early February as a revised version with exercises that you can help you achieve healthier tech practices.