Today, March 1 – March 2, sundown to sundown, is the National Day of Unplugging. If you are reading this upon my publishing you are…. probably not unplugged. That’s okay. My post is only coincidental with this holiday.

A few days ago I read a New York Times article called “Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain.” The title is pretty self-explanatory- it’s a first-person narrative about trying to unplug from the addictive smartphone. It’s not about entirely ditching our smartphones, but about being more conscious of our use, and about being more conscious about opening up the phone to just… browse. After reading this article I decided that I too needed to scale back.

One of the tips in the article that stuck out to me was this:

“Catherine encouraged me to set up mental speed bumps so that I would be forced to think for a second before engaging with my phone. I put a rubber band around the device, for example, and changed my lock screen to one that showed three questions to ask myself every time I unlocked my phone: “What for? Why now? What else?””

And so I decided to implement this tip. Based on the three questions, I created a new Lock Screen image for my phone. And I’m including the full size image below as a FREE download in case you too want to use it to help yourself unplug from your smartphone a bit.  Simply Right-Click and Save. Or Hold and Save if you’re on your phone 😉 And set it as your Lock Screen image. Enjoy and good luck 🙂

This image is of course based on my Wishmaker painting.