I have a confession. At the end of a full working day, nine to five, in front of screens, I would come home, sort dinner, get the kids sorted, and then sit back down at the computer. Not because I had to. Just because it was there, and it was easier than thinking about it.
That’s the habit I’ve been trying to break in 2026. Not doomscrolling. Not phone-checking at 6am. Just the sheer, relentless gravitational pull of the desk. The way it absorbed every spare hour that wasn’t already accounted for by the day job, the blog, and the general admin chaos that comes with three kids, a house, a car that needs updating on the app, and an Alexa device in every room that somehow never does what you actually ask it to.
It sounds simple when I say it out loud. Step away from the desk. Go outside more. Be more active. But when you’re running a tech blog on top of a full-time job, the desk isn’t just a bad habit. It’s where the work gets done. That’s the bit nobody tells you about screen time challenges: some of that screen time is legitimate.
The Problem With Being a “Tech Person”
Here’s the thing about loving tech. You don’t really get to hate the tools. I’m not one of those people who thinks smartphones are ruining society or that we’d all be better off with a Nokia 3310. I’ve built drones from scratch, I run local AI models at home, and I have a 3D printer that I genuinely consider a family member. Tech is not the enemy. But even I had to admit that by the start of 2026, I was sitting at my desk for something like twelve or thirteen hours on some days. That’s not enthusiasm. That’s a problem.
The research backs this up more broadly. A giffgaff poll from January 2026 found that 47% of Brits want to reduce their mobile use this year. According to the IPA TouchPoints 2025 dataset, British adults now spend more time on their phones each day than watching TV for the first time in the study’s twenty-year history. The average is three hours and twenty-one minutes on mobile, compared to three hours and sixteen minutes in front of the telly. For context, that mobile figure has more than doubled since 2015, when it sat at just one hour and seventeen minutes. I’d wager my desk time was doing something similar.
The hard part isn’t knowing you should change. It’s the friction of actually doing it when everything about your setup makes staying put the path of least resistance.
What I Actually Cut First
The first thing to go was short-form video. Reels, Shorts, TikTok-style content. I stopped watching all of it. Just cold turkey, no dramatic announcement, I just stopped. And honestly? It’s been the single biggest time saver of this whole experiment. If you want one practical tip from this entire article, that’s it. Cut the short-form video and watch how much time reappears in your day. It’s almost embarrassing how much I was watching without registering it as “watching something.”
The second thing was gaming. I used to play Call of Duty semi-regularly, nothing serious, but enough to eat an hour or two on an evening. I stopped that too. I thought it would be harder. I thought I’d miss it. I don’t. Not even slightly. I think what I actually enjoyed wasn’t the game itself. It was the excuse to sit down and switch off. Once I found other ways to decompress that didn’t involve a screen, the pull disappeared.
What replaced it? More family time at the dinner table that actually feels present rather than rushed. A bit more time outside. The camping gear has seen more use in the last few months than in the past couple of years combined.
The Harder Bit: Work That Doesn’t Go Away
Here’s where I have to be honest, because I don’t want this to sound like I’ve sorted everything out and I’m now some kind of mindful productivity monk. The desk time that’s genuinely hard to cut isn’t the gaming or the browsing. It’s the blog, the home admin, the bits that actually need to get done.
I work hybrid, so there are days I’m commuting into London on the SWR train and the rest of the time I’m at home. On office days, I lose the commute to whatever I can manage on a phone screen, and the phone genuinely isn’t as efficient for certain tasks. Writing a full article on a Samsung Galaxy Ultra is possible, but it’s not comfortable. Responding to emails is fine. Actually building and managing anything is a slog.
So my approach this year has been twofold. First, I’ve been leaning heavily into automation and AI to handle the repetitive stuff. I already run local AI models at home through Ollama and LM Studio, and I’ve been using them far more deliberately for drafting, summarising, and planning. I’m not handing everything off. The writing still needs to sound like me. But a lot of the groundwork that used to eat an hour can now be sketched out in ten minutes. That time saving is real, and it’s allowed me to step away from the desk with a cleaner conscience.
Second, I’ve accepted that some screen time is just the cost of doing things I care about. The blog is not going anywhere. But there’s a difference between purposeful screen time and aimless screen time, and I’d lost track of that line entirely.
Progress Report: Where I’m Actually At
| Habit | Status | Honest Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Short-form video | Stopped completely | Massive win, zero regret |
| Gaming (Call of Duty) | Stopped | Easier than expected |
| Evening desk sessions | Significantly reduced | Still a work in progress |
| Commute screen time | Still struggling | Hardest part by far |
| AI/automation for blog tasks | Actively using | Genuinely helping |
| Getting outside more | Better than 2025 | Room to improve |
The commute is genuinely the toughest one. You’re on a train, you’ve got forty-five minutes each way, and the phone is right there. I’ve tried audiobooks. I’ve tried just looking out of the window, which honestly isn’t as meditative as people make it sound when you’re staring at Surbiton. What’s actually helped most is having something intentional to do rather than filling the time passively, whether that’s reading something proper, planning something out, or occasionally just doing nothing, which it turns out is a skill that requires practice.
The unexpected bit is how much more productive I feel overall. I assumed cutting gaming and video content would leave a gap. Instead I feel like I’ve reclaimed time I didn’t realise I’d lost. I’m getting more done in fewer hours at the desk, which is the whole point.
Hype Cycle Check
LIKELY TO LAST: Using AI and automation to reduce repetitive tasks is a genuine quality-of-life improvement. Once you’ve offloaded the dull groundwork, you don’t go back.
WATCH CLOSELY: Screen time reduction tools and app limits. They help, but they’re easy to override when you’re motivated. The willpower still has to come from you.
VAPOURWARE RISK: The idea that any single app, device, or productivity system will fix your relationship with screens without a deliberate behavioural change. The tools are only as good as the intention behind them.
What This Means for CES 2027
Every year at CES, there’s a wave of wellness tech: sleep trackers, focus devices, screen time managers, digital detox gadgets. It’s always been a slightly awkward category at a show that is fundamentally about selling you more technology. But the conversation is maturing. As more people genuinely reckon with how their devices are affecting their attention and energy, I think we’ll see smarter ambient tech that fades into the background rather than demanding your eyes. Less notification noise, more useful passive data. Whether the consumer appetite is really there is the question I’ll be watching.
What to Watch
- AI-assisted task compression. As local and cloud AI tools get better at drafting, summarising, and planning, the amount of screen time required for knowledge work should shrink meaningfully.
- Dumbphone momentum. According to the giffgaff 2026 poll, one in ten Brits plans to switch or has already switched to a phone with no internet or apps. That’s a niche, but it’s a growing one, and it signals genuine demand.
- Commute experience design. Trains, buses, and hybrid working patterns mean commute time is increasingly contested between productive use and passive scrolling. Something will fill that gap better than either currently does.
- Workplace screen fatigue. As hybrid and desk-based working becomes the norm for more people, the idea of going home and sitting at another screen will keep losing appeal. Watch for employers and wellbeing platforms responding to that.
If any of this sounds familiar, the desk you can’t quite leave, the scroll you didn’t mean to start, the game that was only supposed to be twenty minutes, come and join the newsletter. I write about tech for people who love it and use it and occasionally need to have an honest word with themselves about it.
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