Like many, when bored I tend to pick up my phone and start fiddling with it or I pull up things on my ipad. Both devices are useful at times, but I should also reduce the amount of passive time on them.

A while back, I recall reading about someone who enabled grayscale mode on their phones to help make things more boring. I decided to do my own similar experiment. Since most of my devices are Apple, the process is similar.

• Under accessability, look for color settings and enable grayscale mode.
• Optionally, under accessability / shortcuts, you can make grayscale a toggle.

Now on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBooks, I can tripple-press a button, and toggle grayscale mode. One of the most immediate observations is how many apps I use depend on color to communicate some kind of state (including some that I wrote). I’m going to try to use grayscale as much as possible over the next week and see if that helps me disconnect a bit more.

I should also go through and audit some of the notification and badge settings to reduce those as well.