Can I replace my phone with a clock?
The question I asked myself two years ago was simple: Can I replace my phone with an alarm clock?
I'm Peter, founder of Habity. Two years ago, I was lying in bed scrolling through my phone, my back turned to my partner. The first thing I reached for every morning was my phone, and it was also the last thing I saw before closing my eyes at night.
That night, we made a decision at home: no phones in the bedroom. It was time to spend more quality time together and take back our sleep.
Back then, there wasn't really a solution that fit our requirements. We wanted something:
- Phone-free
- Worked without Wi-Fi
- No subscriptions
- Relatively compact
- and had some nice, gentle alarm tones.
So I gathered a team in Copenhagen, and we started designing what we thought an alarm clock in today's age should be like. It became the Habity bedside clock.
With this new clock, I finally had the answer to my question: yes, I could ditch the phone in the bedroom and replace it with something much simpler and less connected.
The first few days were tough. But after that, stepping into the bedroom felt different -there was a calming presence to the clock and a slower pace. No short videos, no texts coming through, no notifications competing for my attention.
I started reading a lot (I have an ebook reader with e-paper of course 😁). We started talking more, looking out the window together, and going to bed earlier. And the mornings? It now takes a good amount of time before the phone is even picked up.
A change like this might seem dramatic, but it's very much possible - and very much needed...
Putting the phone away a few minutes before bed quickly becomes half an hour, then an hour, then two hours. The same happens in the morning.
I can highly recommend trying to create these "phone-free zones" in your home. We need more time to just be present.
