This is an ongoing battle for me. I do make progress but it seems that the fundamental design of our culture and society is just increasingly depending and requiring to be online all the time. But I found that a set of simple rituals will go a long way.
> We check our phones every 12 minutes, often just after waking up.
First of all I reduced my involvement with services that cause me to check my phone. I don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter. I even blocked youtube.com and youtu.be on my computers.
At some point in the evening I will switch off my phone and keep it in the living room when going to bed. That solved my terrible habit of reading reddit, HN etc while lying in bed intending to sleep. After stopping this I realized how detrimentally this impacted my sleep quality. It also keeps me from immediately reaching for my phone upon waking up. Now I'll do several things before giving attention to my phone.
> more and more experts are telling us that these interruptions and distractions have eroded our ability to concentrate.
I guess a lot of people will argue that it didn't erode anything but instead just changed our ability to concentrate - in the sense of evolutionary addaption - but I will argue that this is in deed a negative development. I do this confidently from a position of personal experience. It simply doesn't feel good. And a lot of people who claim they like being on and conneceted 24/7 seem nervous and anxious to me.
> More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so.
That's one of the first things to learn on a job - not to respond to mails immediately. It seems this will just trigger the next mail and establish an expectation to receive fast response from me at all times. In the end it will just snowball and suddenly I'm only writing mails all day long.
> ... The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
I observed that with me, too. The antidote is naturally to read more lengthy texts like books. Sitting down and just reading a book in the evening feels sometimes like therapy - but in a good way. (Currently I'm reading Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court")
> Start by switching off smartphone alerts, or taking social media apps off your phone, then switching off the device for increasingly long periods.
I even got me second (dumb) phone (Bea C65). It's number one feature is that it can do nothing except calling and SMS. Also the number is known currently only to my girlfriend. I take it with me when I am certain that I won't need my smartphone. No way to check about Seehofer or Kashogghi on sueddeutsche.de.
> Most of us breathe poorly: ...
I practice various kinds of meditation - currently twice a day for half an hour each. Body Scan, Zen meditation, Wim Hof breathing, Pranayama inspired breathing etc. This is easily the most important and healthy habit for me at the moment.
> Although any type of light can inhibit sleep, research has shown that light towards the blue end of the spectrum is especially effective at keeping you awake because it stimulates the retina in the eye and inhibits the secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland in the brain.
In hindsight I have to conclude that reducing brightness on my S7 to lowest setting + activating the blue light filter + using a special app to reduce the brightness even further was not sufficient to prevent sleep issues.