Time limits with Lock Me Out not fully resolving addiction to my phone

I set time limits on texting and other apps with the Lock Me Out app on Android, and some of the time it has not been effective. Like yesterday when I had a 10 minute time limit on texting, but I still ended up being glued to the phone and not able to put it down for a long time. When I was glued to the phone, I felt like there was a lot less to do on the phone so I was using the phone cut off from the activity I love, and really not liking it. If I have much more of these experiences feeling stuck on a phone and feeling severely limited in not being able to text friends, I might disable the time limit on texting and just use Lock Me Out for limiting or blocking other apps like social media. I might even disable the time limit on texting soon.

For controlling my addiction to my phone I turn the phone's power off before/when I get home, but not always consistently. It seems like this may be a more effective barrier to texting or my phone addiction because I cannot as easily grab the phone and immediately spend time on it, and I may decide to keep it off for my own good and to be able to get more tasks done. I have a landline and cell plan on my Galaxy Watch so I can still receive urgent calls from my mom if she has a pressing need to call me.

With my smartphone addiction, I also have weird behavior of wanting to get in bed in with my phone. Previously, I loved to just get in bed and text friends and found it really relaxing. Now with a time limit in place if I get in bed with the phone, I may spend some time browsing the Google Discover Feed, or scroll through YouTube to see what is there, but yesterday I kind of ran out of stuff to do on the phone, so I just put the phone aside and laid there.

With the time limits in place, it would be super productive if I opened the Bible app and worked on memorizing Bible verses. I did that once with these new limits, but a lot of times I have not.

Thank you, Mark, for your helpful and encouraging reply. As an update, I decided to remove the time limits for texting, not wanting to be in a situation again where I am glued to my phone feeling severely restricted in what I can do. The result is that the only reliable strategy I have to try to control my smartphone use is to turn the phone’s power off when/before I get home. One of the inconveniences is two step verification where I have to get a code texted to my phone for certain websites/accounts I have to use. In the future I am thinking of getting an authenticator app or password manager on another device for this purpose, but for now, if I have to receive the 2FA code, I could power my phone on only for a few seconds and power it off immediately after inputting the code. However, needing to have the phone for 2FA makes the next phase of my plan a hassle. In the future, I want to obtain a special time lock safe (or use a safe with the combination saved in the timelock online lockbox) to lock myself out from the phone for certain periods of time. One of the timelock safes I researched is bypassable by removing the batteries I think, so it might not be an option.

So because I disabled the time limits for texting in the Lock Me Out app, and I may not consistently turn my smartphone’s power off, I am back in the situation where I could waste entire evenings after work spending time on my phone, which seems like a problem to me, but I do not want to be on a smartphone where I am severely restricted. If the phone is powered off, and not locked up in a safe, if I really want to text, I can just get the phone and power it back on.

I also struggle with the inconvenience of powering my smartphone off. It is really convenient to listen to the relaxing music stations on my phone with my bluetooth earphones to block out outside sound in the apartment I live in. With turning off my phone, if I wanted to listen to music with my wireless earphones, I would have more of a hassle of having to turn my laptop on to stream the music, and I think if I run the laptop all the time when I am at home that it wears on the battery so that the laptop gets more worn down sooner in time. I may want to get an iPad or alternate device locked down with restrictions in the future where I can stream music. And there is also an inconvenience where if the laptop connects to the bluetooth earphones, it will always take precedence over connection to the phone, meaning I will have to remove the earphones in settings on the computer if I want to connect them to the phone.

Another inconvenience with powering off the phone is I cannot easily look up phone numbers and make calls, so if I want to call with my landline, I have to use the laptop to look up phone numbers. This inconvenience has sometimes resulted in me deciding to keep the smartphone turned on when I get home to make the call.