What should I do if I feel my phone is running my life?

Start by asking who the boss is right now, you or the device. The New Top 10% does not answer with quitting. It answers with a design: mark one threshold where the phone rests, so that every time it comes in with you, it comes in because you decided.

The feeling has a name in the book

The preface of The New Top 10% is addressed to readers who are bothered by one question: who is the boss right now, you or the device? It is also written for people who feel they are here in body but not really here. If that is your feeling, the book is saying you are the intended reader, and that the feeling is worth taking seriously rather than explaining away.

Move IX starts from an honest description of how deep it goes. The phone is advisor, confidant, wallet, memory, and an extra part of the brain, so close that family members call it an electronic pacifier. The book cites a figure to match: 83% of Gen Z say they have an unhealthy relationship with their phone. That figure is the book's citation and was not checked here, but the description will sound familiar to most readers.

The tempting answer, and why the book rejects it

When a phone feels like it is in charge, the obvious answer is to get rid of it. Move IX considers exactly that. It tells the story of the musician Ed Sheeran, who in 2015 announced a break from his phone, email and social media, saying he had been seeing the world through a screen and not his eyes. He said he had reached a "very low place" with the phone.

The book respects the decision and then points out the limit. Quitting completely and for a long time is not realistic for most of us, because we need phones for essentials like identification and payments. Even Sheeran did not disconnect fully: he moved his email to an iPad, and in 2021 he bought a basic Nokia so that the British government could reach him in quarantine.

The deeper point is that total disconnection swaps one default for another. Instead of "always with me", it becomes "never". Either way there is no moment of conscious choice.

What the book proposes instead

The book's alternative is to redesign the environment, by marking the spaces in our lives where we temporarily part ways with the phone. It describes three simple actions, which it calls ZUZA.

Divide your life into an inside space reserved for the self, where you decide what comes in, and an outside space open to the world.
Mark the crossing point, the doorway, with a dedicated docking station for the phone.
Choose. The station is a nudge that forbids nothing. At the moment of crossing it invites a conscious choice: bring the phone in, or leave it outside.

Even when the phone does come in, it comes in because you chose. The book says this is how control returns to your hands.

A first step you can do tonight

The book ends Move IX with a choice: leave your phone outside your bedroom at night, on a chair you set up just for it, or keep living by the defaults others set for you. A chair is enough. The book says any fixed object at the entrance can be a station.

Our suggestions for the first week, which are applications and not quotes:

Pick one place and one hour. One doorway, and the evening hour you most want back.
Dock the phone there when you come in. Do it every day for a week.
Notice what happens in the first ten minutes. The book asks for awareness and not for willpower or a perfect record.
Count two numbers. The book suggests writing down how many times you docked the phone and how long it stayed, and comparing week to week. ZUZA, the doorway dock Beeri Tzori developed, counts docking and does not lock or block anything.

Why this works with how the mind behaves

Move IX uses an idea from psychologist James J. Gibson: an object can invite an action. A button invites a press, a chair invites sitting. A docking station by the door invites a choice about the phone, and because the invitation is in the object, you do not need to remember it or summon willpower at the end of a tiring day. This is a design argument, not a promise of results.

What this does not ask

It does not ask you to feel guilty, and it does not claim the phone is the enemy. Sometimes it is right to stay on autopilot, and the book says we can sense when. The question is whether the phone is in your hand because you decided, or because the habit decided for you. You can only answer that if there is a moment to decide.

The preface and the first two chapters of The New Top 10%, by Dr. Yaacov Tzori and Beeri Tzori, are free to read: read the first chapters.

This post draws on the preface and Moves III and IX of The New Top 10% (the free first chapters). The survey figure is the book's citation and was not checked independently here.