Committing to using your phone less can be a daunting task. That’s at least in part due to the dopamine release triggered by seeing something new on your device — whether it’s a text from a loved one, funny TikTok or a work Slack, says Niro Feliciano, psychotherapist and TODAY contributor. Still, it seems more and more people are endeavoring to cut down their screen time, with the hope that it will make them more productive and focused, and less stressed. Your relationship to your phone is a central component of Start TODAY’s 30-day plan to build back your attention span, since many people always keep it just a few feet away from them, where it’s prime for distraction. To finally take the leap to use your phone less, there’s only one place to start, Feliciano says. Mental health tip of the day: Note what distracts you most about your phone The way we engage with our phones is often so mindless and second nature that we may not realize we’re doing it. How often have you picked up your phone to do something specific but then got distracted by an errant notification? “ If you look on your phone at the amount of times you pick it up … I think that will surprise people,” Feliciano says. “We don’t realize how much we reach for our phone, look at our phone.” Before being able to use your phone less, it’s helpful to understand when and why you reach for it in the first place. You can even look up which apps you spend the most time on. Why it matters Smartphones are designed to make users want to spend more time on them, Feliciano points out. As a result, it can be easy “to lose awareness” of how many minutes (or hours) you do just that. “We might go to our phone to check an email and end up 30 minutes later down some rabbit hole on Instagram or Facebook or whatever it might be. It happens to me all the time, to all of us,” she adds. Research has found a few negative health effects linked to excess smartphone use, from reduced physical activity to mental health conditions (especially tied to social media), like anxiety and depression, and lower cognitive performance. How to get started Once you’ve determined what is most distracting about your smartphone for you, try taking that knowledge into the rest of our 30-day plan to improve your attention span. Day two involves silencing your notifications for three hours, followed by setting a fixed time of day during which you can check your phone on day three. If a full 30 days seems like too much, Feliciano suggests simply leaving your phone in another room (or just out of sight) as much as possible. “Before you go to bed or when you wake up, if that phone is on the other side of your room or out of your room, you are not going to spend as much time on the phone,” she says. Social Media Aug 6 Court orders Meta to pay $567M to address kids' mental health, safety on its platforms mental health Jun 1 Around 1 in 5 young people use AI chatbots for mental health advice, survey finds This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: A 31-Day Healthy Aging Plan to Improve Strength, Mobility And Heart Health 13 Foods to Eat Instead of Taking Vitamin B Supplements, According to Dietitians The No. 1 Question to Ask About Your Prostate Cancer Risk, According to a Doctor ...read more read less