For a year I have been putting my phone in a drawer in another room for two hours at a time, twice a day. First block is right after breakfast. Second block is right after lunch. Four hours of unavailability, in the middle of my working day, on purpose.
The mechanics: I tell the two or three people who need to reach me for genuine emergencies that they can call my partner’s number if it is truly urgent (nothing has ever been). I set an out-of-office style Slack status. I put the phone in a specific drawer in a specific room and I do not check it. When two hours are up I check it and process anything relevant.
What I did not expect: my sense of time slowed down. Two focused hours feels like four unfocused ones. What I also did not expect: nobody minds. In a year of doing this, I have missed zero things that mattered. I have missed hundreds of things that did not. And when I come back to the phone at 11 or at 3, whatever is there is small and easily handled. Nothing has been so time-sensitive that a two-hour lag broke it. That is a lesson worth learning at 34, before you have burned another decade at the speed of push notifications.