What constant phone checking does to your tolerance
And what to do in moments you usually check your phone
In 2014, researchers ran a simple experiment: participants were left alone in an empty room for up to 15 minutes. They had no phone, no music and nothing to write.
In front of them was a single button. Pressing it gave them a mild but unpleasant electric shock. Before the experiment, participants said they would pay money to avoid being shocked. Then they were left alone.
67% of the men pressed the button at least once. 25% of women did the same. Both groups struggled, but men struggled more.
The experiment shows how hard it is for men to sit with nothing. Today, phones are the quickest way to fill empty time. It’s a habit that follows us everywhere: we take them into the bathroom, check them at the dinner table, or pull them out the second we stand in a line.
As men, we think self-control shows up in big decisions: work, training, discipline, and hard conversations. But control is tested in small, everyday moments:
30 seconds of waiting for an elevator.
The wait for the microwave to heat up your food.
The gap between finishing one task and starting the next.
If you cannot stay with nothing for one minute, that shows how fast you look for distraction. Constant phone checking signals a specific state of mind: “Nothing happening feels wrong. I need the next thing.”
What gets called boredom shows up in a few ways:
1) Restlessness:
It starts in the body. Your hands want movement. You just want to do something. The phone gives your hands a task to do.
2) Mild anxiety
The low-level worry that you’re missing something or falling behind. It’s the constant urge to stay “updated” even when nothing is actually happening.
3) Lack of stimulation
If you don’t rapidly act on the first two feelings, what stays is a brief sense of nothing. No task and no feedback; just you, waiting. The phone fills this space instantly.
In all these cases, you use the phone to stop the feeling.
What’s the cost?
Your tolerance drops. You feel uneasy when the battery gets low. You struggle to read a book for ten minutes or listen to a long story without your mind drifting. Small delays irritate you quickly.
What to do then?
Quitting phones entirely isn’t the point. They are useful tools. The issue is how automatically you use them.
Watch for the moment before you reach for it. You are sitting by yourself. You feel that short wave of restlessness or emptiness. Your hand moves before you consciously decide anything.
You can interrupt the habit. If you delay the action by a few seconds, you weaken the habit. The urge passes if you wait.
Over time, this changes how quickly you need distraction in small moments. Many urge-based habits follow the same pattern: an uncomfortable feeling appears, and you take relief immediately.
Phone use is the best place to train this because you face the urge dozens of times a day. When you practice staying with the phone urge, you are using the same response pattern you need for bigger urges, like overeating, losing your temper, or porn.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
- Blaise Pascal.
Action of the week
This week, every time you find yourself waiting for less than five minutes, the phone stays in your pocket. Just stand or sit there with empty hands.
This includes:
Standing in line for coffee.
Sitting at a table while a friend goes to the bathroom.
The minute after you sit down and before starting your next task
What to do instead:
Most advice tells you to “be present” or “meditate,” but those are too abstract. Instead, do the two things that feel uncomfortable:
Keep your hands empty. Don’t fiddle with your keys or your watch. Just let your hands be still or in your pockets.
Look at what is in front of you. Notice the texture of the wall, the way the person in front of you is standing, or the light coming through the window.
The goal is to notice the physical urge to grab the phone, and simply let it be there without acting on it.
You prove to yourself that you can handle a few minutes of nothing.