Things to do instead of scrolling (sorted by the moment)

The best thing to do instead of scrolling is whatever fits the moment you’re in. Two spare minutes in a queue need a different answer from a tired evening on the couch, so pick a few swaps for each situation and decide on them before you reach for the phone, not while you’re holding it.

Many lists online give you 50 ideas sorted by type: outdoors, creative, self-care. That’s nice to read on a Sunday. It doesn’t help at 10pm, when you’re tired and the phone is in your hand. So this one is sorted by the moment instead.

Why the phone wins the empty minute

It isn’t that scrolling is so great. It’s that doing nothing feels surprisingly bad.

In a set of 11 studies published in Science, University of Virginia and Harvard researchers asked people to sit alone for 6 to 15 minutes with nothing to do but think. Participants typically didn’t enjoy it, and enjoyed simple tasks a lot more. In one study, people sat for 15 minutes with a button that gave them an electric shock. Twelve of 18 men and six of 24 women pressed it at least once, and the researchers counted only people who had said earlier that they’d pay money not to be shocked again.

So when you have a spare minute, you’ll grab whatever is easiest. Right now that’s a feed that’s always in your pocket. The fix isn’t to sit there and suffer. It’s to have another easy option ready, and to make it as easy to start as unlocking your phone.

If you have two minutes

Waiting for the kettle, the bus, a file to download. These are the moments that add up, and the swap has to be tiny.

• Look at something far away. Out the window, down the street. Just let your eyes rest on it.
• Take five slow breaths. It sounds too simple to count. Try it once and see.
• Tidy one small thing. One drawer, one shelf, the stuff on your desk.
• Stretch. Neck, shoulders, the back you’ve been hunching over all day.
• Read one page. Keep a paperback in your bag or a book of short poems on the counter.
• Write down the thing on your mind. A sticky note works. Often the urge to scroll is really an urge to avoid a thought.
• Do nothing on purpose. Two minutes of being bored won’t hurt you, and you might like it more than you expect.

If you’re too tired to do anything

This is the big one, and many lists skip it. When you’re worn out, “learn a language” isn’t going to happen. You need something that asks even less of you than the feed does.

• Lie down with your eyes closed for ten minutes. Set a timer if you’re worried you’ll nod off.
• Take a shower or a bath. The phone can’t come along, and that’s a bonus.
• Put on music or a podcast and turn the screen off. You get something to listen to without a feed to swipe.
• Do an easy puzzle. A crossword, a jigsaw, a sudoku book, something that keeps your hands busy without much thinking.
• Just go to bed. If you’re scrolling because you’re exhausted, sleep beats the feed.

If the TV is on

If you reach for the phone as a second screen, give your hands something else to do:

• Knit, crochet or sketch. All easy to put down when something good happens on screen.
• Fold laundry or do small chores. You were going to do them anyway.
• Do a jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table.
• Or watch the show properly. If you’re bored enough to need a second screen, maybe pick something better, or turn it off.

If you have an hour free

This is where the classic list ideas belong, and they’re good ones when you’ve got the time.

• Go for a walk, outside if you can. In a Stanford study of walking and creativity, walking on a treadmill raised 81% of participants’ scores on a test of coming up with new uses for everyday objects. Some of the boost carried over when they sat back down, and in another experiment, walking outside produced the most original analogies. So a walk is a good move when you need fresh ideas.
• Cook something that takes a bit of attention. A new recipe, bread, a proper sauce.
• Call someone instead of watching them online. Ten minutes on the phone with a friend usually beats an hour of their stories.
• Start or restart a hobby. Hands-on ones give your hands something to do besides swiping: drawing, an instrument, plants, a model kit.
• Go somewhere. The library, a café with a book, a class, a park bench.
• Make a plan for the next time. Book the dinner, buy the tickets, text the group chat with a date.

If it’s late at night

If you scroll in bed, the setup matters more than willpower. We’ve covered it in detail in how to stop using your phone in bed, but the short version:

• Keep a paper book or a notebook on the nightstand, where the phone used to be.
• Write tomorrow’s to-do list so it stops circling in your head.
• Listen to an audiobook on a sleep timer with the screen off.
• Charge the phone somewhere you’d have to get up to reach.

Decide what you’ll do before the moment comes

Here’s the part that makes the rest work. In the moment, you won’t remember a list. You’ll do whatever you planned, or you’ll do what you always do.

Psychologists call a plan like this an “if-then plan” (the formal name is implementation intention). Instead of “I’ll scroll less”, you decide: “If I pick up my phone while the kettle boils, then I’ll look out the window instead.” In a 2006 review of 94 independent tests, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran found these plans had a medium-to-large effect on whether people reached their goals. They helped people get started and stay on track when distractions came up.

To make one:

1. Pick your two or three biggest scrolling moments. On the couch after dinner, in bed, the first minutes after you wake up.
2. Choose one swap for each from the lists above. Pick one, not five.
3. Write it as “If [moment], then [swap].” For example: “If I sit on the couch after dinner, then I’ll pick up my book first.”
4. Put the swap where the phone usually is. The book on the couch cushion, the sketchbook on the coffee table, the charger in the hallway.

That last step is what makes the swap as easy as the phone. If the alternative is in another room, the phone wins.

When you still reach for the phone anyway

Some days the if-then plan works. Other days you pick up the phone “just to check” and look up 40 minutes later. That doesn’t mean you lack willpower. It means the feed is very good at keeping you, and the moment you’d need to stop is exactly when stopping is hardest.

For those apps, a limit helps, as long as it’s one you can’t quietly undo. By default, your iPhone’s own Screen Time limits come with an Ignore Limit button, which we cover in how to make Screen Time limits you can’t ignore. For more habit and settings tips, see how to stop scrolling on your phone.

This is the gap PeerPause fills. You give an app a daily limit, and when you hit it, the app locks with no ignore button. If you want more time, you ask your Time Buddy, a friend you choose, and they accept or deny. Having to ask a real person “can I have 15 more minutes of Instagram?” can be enough to make you pick up the book instead. The trade-offs: your buddy has to actually answer, and setting limits on your own apps needs PeerPause Pro, though being someone’s Time Buddy costs nothing.

You don’t need an app to start, though. Pick one moment, one swap, and put the swap where your phone usually sits. Tonight is a fine time to try.