8 Tips
For Tech‑Life
Balance
If you’ve been looking for a reset on your relationship with your phone, you’re in the right place.
Take your time with these tips. They are suggestions not rules. Take what works for you and leave the rest.
Welcome
Your Guide - Sawrah Amini
Sawrah Amini is a yoga teacher and meditation teacher, self-support guide, PSYCH-K Facilitator, and reiki master who has spent over a decade studying, experimenting with, and teaching conscious technology use. She bridges embodied wisdom and everyday tech life, helping people examine their relationship with their devices and realign it with their values. Her work is based in spirituality and practicality. You don't have to figure it out alone.
You can find out more about her connection circles, classes, courses, on demand study, books, and private sessions at www.saw-rah.com
What Is A Conscious Tech Life?
Conscious Tech Life is a lifestyle and perspective framework that helps you build a conscious relationship with your phone and daily tech. We all feel that unconscious pull to our phones at all hours of the day. They are designed like that. Instead of letting your phone decide for you, this work asks you what you really want. It is not about shame, or telling you your screen time is too high. It's about holding space for you to ask the questions you haven't yet dared to ask. This guide is one step in your awareness process, to help you reclaim your time, agency, creativity, and self-connection. Join me on this journey.
Tips For Tech-Life Balance
Your phone was designed to keep you coming back. These tips are about interrupting that and finding your way back to yourself, one small shift at a time.
Accessibility Options - Change The Colors
I use grayscale, but there are lots of options!
Color options are usually listed under “Accessibility,” however each phone is different. Changing the colors on your phone changes the whole experience of how you use, look at your phone and what draws you in or not. The vibrant colors are meant to draw you in and activate your brain to want more. Grayscale helps mitigate that. There are also other color options if grayscale does not work for you.
Slow Your Scroll
Scrolling when bored is as socially acceptable and addictive as cigarettes in the 1950s.
If you must scroll, make it your own content instead of something algorithm generated. On iPhone, create a photo album of your favorite uplifting, inspiring screenshots, then set a photo widget on your home screen to that album. It will serve you content you already chose. If you feel the call to scroll, go there instead. Android has similar widget options worth exploring.
Clean Out Your App Closet
How often do you clean out your closets? How often do you clean out your apps?
If you clean your closet on a semi-regular basis, or on a schedule, do the same with your phone. Or better yet, do them together at the same time. Cleaning out the apps we no longer use, helps us have a more visually supportive experience on our phone and decreases overwhelm and fatigue when looking at it. Reduce visual clutter.
First Page Screen Bliss
Everything has an energy and that includes our digital and technological life as well.
In addition to the above, generally having less apps on your phone is helpful with overwhelm. But having a cleaner home screen is even better. Try keeping four or less apps on the first page of your phone, so the first thing you see when you open it isn’t a million things. Seems simple, but it makes a big difference. Better yet, make it be 1-4 things that you know will make you smile instead of scowl.
Everything has an energy, and that includes the intersection of our technological lives and our embodied experiences.
~ Sawrah
Tips For Tech-Life Balance
Move Around Your App Furniture
One of the most fun ways to see how habituated you are to your phone is to move your apps around on a frequent basis.
Once you do, you will likely find yourself automatically and unconsciously going to a certain area of your phone where an app used to be. It takes a little while, aka, days or a week or more, to get your brain to shift to this new placement. Try this when you do your app closet clean out, or as you find ways of organizing your phone that work better for you.
Notifications
The less notifications you have turned on on your phone, the better.
I suggest no more than 5 notifications to be turned on. If that freaks you out, or feels like too big of a change too soon, make a list of all of the app notifications you have turned on. Hand write it out. Then with your pen physically go through the list and prioritize your app notifications. Adjust and shut them off on the phone according to your list and the needs of your life. We need less notifications than we think.
Lights Out - Goodnight
Does your phone have a bed time?
Does it “sleep” in the same place every night? Does it go to bed when you do, or before? Choose the sleep period for your phone and then adjust your environment to support that by having a place where your phone goes to bed. I’m pretty much unreachable after 8:00 pm. That works for my life, but it might not work for yours. What is a reasonable time, for your life, that your phone can go to bed? At what time can you become unavailable?
Your Phone Is A Toddler & A Security Blanket
Pause for a moment and consider this.
In some ways your phone is like a toddler, demanding attention, resistant to boundaries, hard to put down. In other ways it makes us act like one. This week, notice one moment where you reach for your phone out of habit rather than intention. One moment where it is calling for your attention without a reason. Just notice. That awareness is where it starts.
Which tip grabbed your attention first? Why do you think this one grabbed you?
How doable is it for you to try some version of this, in the context of your own life?
We are not looking for perfection here. We are looking to create an open conversation with ourselves, and experiment with what works for you and your life. No two people are the same, and no two lives are the same. Do what works for you, test it, readjust as needed, and keep going.
What would making this change, even temporarily, mean for your life?
How do you envision this change might benefit your life?
What’s Next?
If you’d like to go deeper, here are two workshops to take the next step. Both are self-paced and designed to fit into a real life, not an ideal one. You can also learn more about conscious tech use at www.saw-rah.com
Video Workshop - How To Create An Input Fast
If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information coming at you every day, this workshop is for you. Through a simple experimentation process, you'll be guided to remove one piece of input from your life and observe what shifts. Once you learn it, you can return to it as often as you need. The best part is you get to decide every aspect of it. It's for you, by you, gently guided by the process we teach you.
Start Your Input FastIf video isn't your thing, try this audio workshop
Audio Workshop - Intro To Conscious Tech
Many of our offerings are minimalist by design. We know you live a busy life, compounded by the false urgency created by our tech. This workshop is available as audio and transcript, so you can move through it at your own pace. It's a grounded introduction to what conscious technology use actually is, and why this framework will change how you look at every piece of tech in your life. We start with awareness, then move to practical ways to reset and rebuild your relationship with tech the way you want it to look.
May you be filled with loving kindness
Transparency Note: The design and formatting of this guide was assisted by AI.