Every single morning, I woke up and reached out to my phone start scrolling the Google discover page (the leftmost home page) for all customised content, mostly hard news, cycling news, product reviews or whatever Google guesses I would be interested in and (s)he's exactly right. That usually took one hour until I realised having to carry on with normal morning routine.

Whenever having meals on my own, I found the phone in my palm and the familiar thumb action started.

And while typing keyboard at work or doing other chores, my left hand naturally grabbed the phone and checked instant messaging with side look. It could just be a few seconds distraction, or turned out to be way longer if clicked into a link sent by friend or subconsciously opened a page.

I've always been aware of these habits, and seen them as nuisance at worst. It's not ideal, but possibly an unavoidable cost at this digital era in return for convenience, especially after repetitive attempts of changes had failed. I almost decided to make peace with myself.

Alas, instinctively, I consistently feel unhappy, feel unable to concentrate for longer time, feel guilty of loss of control. I had thought the addiction to digital contents is simply one of the symptoms. Until I realised, on the contrary, the digital addiction is the culprit. Or more likely, it's a vicious cycle.

You Destroy Your Brain Health Rapidly With These 4 Stupid Daily Habits by Khyati Jain hit all my sores in a short article. Most importantly, it provides further materials explaining how those habits could change the brain's working to the degree that the impact goes beyond digital addiction to your mind ability.

• The wake-up phone check affects the cognitive ability for day long by breaking the transition of brain waves.
• The check of phone at boredom flourish the escapism which results in shorter span of focus on all tasks.
• Jumping directly into digital content whenever there's spare time and at end of work hours robs the brain of chance of daydreaming which kills creativity.

I sense that this might be my chance for another fight, and succeed in the end. At least this is my first time starting writing straight after having read an article, partially thanks to my earlier decision this week that whenever I'm thinking about the idea to write something, just go ahead and write down regardless of the quality.

There's a long list of questions I'd like to seek answers, and I haven't managed to ponder on them longer than a few minutes before reaching out for phone and stopped the mind flow since nobody knows when.

Here, I'll just share the record of all the approaches I've tried and failed in this fight against digital addiction and hopefully won't need to come back and add one more line:

• Remove the entrance to content: It worked for a short while but I either added back or seek alternatives at last. This time I remove the Google Discover page as a helping hand
• Monitor screen time: A very early time attempt. I turned that off after a while after overriding the reminder again and again
• Remind the original reason of checking the phone: It worked for a few hours. Yet once I feel back to the reflex of checking phone the remind just lost.
• Feel the guiltiness and roll in it: It didn't help other than sinking myself further into remorse. Indeed I felt some much better after promising myself no longer self beating that I still see it as one of my best achievement.
• Relief from guiltiness: Let it go. Less complex side effect from both self deprecation and addition. Problem remained unsolved.
• Leave phone away from bed before sleep: I'm still doing this recently. It definitely helped with quality of sleep. However I'll jump to the phone first thing in the morning which is still problematic.

Update after one week

It's been my best week since I felt the pain of addiction. I feel free. Now I'm polishing this blog at early morning of Sunday, after bathing in London summer's barely noticeable sunshine, without picking up the phone that was charged overnight in the living room.

In the past week, I've been able to contemplate significantly longer with fruitful results. Consistently being aware of my impulse to grab the phone, I'm able to consciously reject the distraction from other matters as well by consciously questioning whether to follow autopilot moves. I've gained back the confidence thing could be within my control, my mind is able to work just as or even better than when I were younger, and simply everything seems clearer to me now.

If it's up to me to say, the key difference compared to earlier attempts is that I'm so scared by the thought that it's not OK to indulge myself with a one-time grab of phone because that one single grab will loosen my grip on my brain autonomy. Knowledge indeed could change human's mentality.