50 Things to Do Without Your Phone

For the next five minutes, the next hour or an entire afternoon when you want something else to do besides scroll.

There are moments when I pick up my phone without having any particular reason to. I am not waiting for an important message. There is nothing I need to look up. I am not even particularly interested in what is happening online. There is simply a small empty space in the day and my phone happens to be the easiest thing to put inside it.

I notice it most in the in-between moments. Ten minutes before I need to leave. The half hour after dinner when I am too tired to start anything complicated. Waiting for the washing machine to finish. Sitting on the sofa and thinking I would like to do something but not knowing what that something is. The phone wins because it requires no decision at all.

That is also why I don't think the answer is always more discipline. Telling yourself stop scrolling still leaves you with the question of what to do instead. It is much easier to put your phone down when there is actually something else you want to pick up.

I already shared 30 Offline Hobbies to Try Instead of Scrolling for anyone looking for something they might want to return to regularly. This list is a little different. You do not need a new hobby, supplies or a free weekend. Some of these ideas take five minutes. Some can fill an evening. Some are productive and others accomplish absolutely nothing.

Choose according to the kind of time you have.

If you only have five minutes

Not every empty moment needs to become the beginning of an activity. Sometimes you simply need something small enough to compete with opening an app.

1. Make a drink and do nothing else while you drink it. Tea, coffee, cold water with lemon – whatever you actually want. Leave your phone where it is and give the drink five minutes of your attention.

2. Stand outside for a few minutes. Step onto the balcony, into the garden or simply outside your front door. Notice whether it is warm or cold, what the sky looks like and what you can hear.

3. Water your plants. Check the soil first rather than enthusiastically drowning all of them. While you are there, remove dead leaves and turn the pots that have been leaning dramatically towards the window.

4. Write down three things currently occupying your mind. Not a full journal entry. Just three things. Sometimes putting them somewhere physical is enough to make your head feel slightly quieter.

5. Stretch. Not a workout and not a programme. Stretch your back, shoulders, legs or whatever currently feels like it has spent too much time sitting in the same position.

6. Look out of the window. This sounds almost comically simple, but when was the last time you actually looked outside without simultaneously holding something?

7. Tidy one tiny area. One drawer, the top of your bedside table or the collection of receipts living in your bag. Stop when that one area is finished.

8. Put on one song and listen to the whole thing. Do not use it as background music while checking something else. Just listen.

9. Write a postcard. You do not need news important enough to justify one. I saw this and thought of you is enough reason to send something.

10. Sit somewhere without filling the time. Five minutes of nothing is allowed to remain five minutes of nothing.

If you have fifteen or twenty minutes

This is the amount of time that disappears particularly easily. It rarely feels long enough to start anything, yet somehow it is more than enough time to scroll through several apps.

11. Read one chapter of a book. Or five pages. You do not need an entire free evening to be a person who reads.

12. Take a short walk around the block. Leave the headphones behind occasionally too. A walk does not always need entertainment accompanying it.

13. Make something you normally buy. A salad dressing, granola, iced coffee, a simple dip or whatever makes sense in your kitchen. Keep it small.

14. Do a crossword, Sudoku or word puzzle. Paper versions are particularly good for those moments when you want your brain occupied without another screen.

15. Sort through a small pile of photographs. Printed photographs are ideal, but an old box of tickets, postcards and little pieces of paper works too.

16. Write a page in your journal. If the blank page is the reason you keep avoiding it, I put together a whole list of ideas in What to Write in a Journal When You Don't Know What to Write. Start with one question and stop after a page.

17. Sit somewhere you do not usually sit. Take your coffee to the front step, read on the floor by the window or sit at the kitchen table instead of automatically returning to the sofa. A small change of place can make an ordinary twenty minutes feel surprisingly different.

18. Make a list on paper. Books you want to read. Meals you love. Places nearby you want to visit. Things you want to do before winter. Not every list needs to become a plan.

19. Mend something. Sew on the button that has been waiting for three months or fix the small tear you keep pretending not to see.

20. Call someone. Not because there is news. Sometimes I had twenty minutes and thought of you is enough.

If you have an hour

An hour is long enough to feel like real free time but short enough that we often lose it without noticing. If you have one, you do not have to make it productive.

21. Go to the library. Wander rather than arriving with a reading list. Pick up whatever catches your attention.

22. Bake something simple. Cookies, banana bread, scones or whatever you already have most of the ingredients for. The point is the making, not creating a perfect kitchen project.

23. Take yourself somewhere for coffee. Bring a book or notebook. Or bring nothing and watch the room around you for a while.

24. Work on a puzzle. You do not need to finish it. Leave it somewhere you can return to tomorrow.

25. Cook something slowly. Choose something you normally rush through and make the preparation part of the evening rather than an obstacle before dinner.

26. Browse a second-hand shop or flea market. You do not have to buy anything. Looking through old books, ceramics, frames and objects with previous lives can be an activity in itself.

27. Try something creative badly. Watercolour, drawing, collage, knitting, clay – whatever you have around. Being bad at something is considerably more relaxing when you have no intention of showing anyone the result.

28. Write a letter you may or may not send. To a friend, somebody you miss, your future self or even someone you have things you wish you could say to. The letter does not need a stamp at the end.

29. Rearrange one small corner of your home. Move a chair, change the books on a shelf, bring flowers into a room or finally hang the picture that has been leaning against the wall.

30. Listen to an entire album. From the first track to the last, in the order somebody deliberately chose for it.

If you have a quiet evening

This is where the phone can become especially good at consuming time. You sit down for a moment and suddenly the evening has somehow happened without you.

31. Have a screen-free dinner. Even if you are eating alone. Put the phone somewhere else and let dinner simply be dinner.

32. Start a book you have been saving. Not the one you think you should read. Choose the one you actually want to open.

33. Take a long bath or shower. Use the nice products you have been saving for some undefined future occasion.

34. Make something with your hands. Knit, crochet, collage, draw, paint, embroider, fold paper or make a card for somebody. If you want more ideas like this, my list of 30 Offline Hobbies to Try Instead of Scrolling is a good place to continue.

35. Play cards. With somebody else if they are around or learn a simple solo card game.

36. Make dessert for no particular reason. An ordinary Tuesday is sufficient reason for cake.

37. Look through old photographs. Not to organise or digitise them. Just look.

38. Write about your day. It does not need to become a deep reflection. Record what happened, what you ate, something somebody said and one thing you want to remember.

39. Prepare tomorrow slowly. Choose your clothes, make lunch, put your bag by the door and then stop. This is not about squeezing productivity out of the evening. It is about making tomorrow morning a little kinder.

40. Go to bed with a book instead of your phone. Even if you only read three pages before falling asleep.

If evenings are when scrolling tends to take over, The Offline Evening inside The Femme Space was created for exactly this kind of moment. It is a free printable guide for spending twenty minutes, an hour or an evening away from your screen, with simple ideas for what to do instead.

If you have an afternoon with nowhere to be

These are the hours I especially don't want to lose to my phone. Not because every free afternoon needs to become memorable but because it is surprisingly nice to reach the end of one and feel as though you were actually there for it.

41. Visit a museum or gallery. Go slowly. You do not have to see every room.

42. Take a long walk somewhere unfamiliar. Choose a neighbourhood, park or route you do not normally take. No step goal required.

43. Go to a bookshop and browse properly. Read back covers, open books at random and make a note of anything you want to borrow or buy later.

44. Cook something that takes time. Make pasta from scratch, bake bread or try the recipe you always skip because it takes ninety minutes.

45. Start a small creative project. Make a scrapbook page, press flowers, paint a tiny canvas, begin a piece of embroidery or finally use the supplies you bought because you were convinced you were about to become a person who makes things.

46. Take yourself on a small solo date. Coffee and cake, a matinee, the market, a park bench with a book. It does not have to be elaborate enough to deserve the word date.

47. Write several letters or postcards. Put on music, make a drink and turn it into the afternoon rather than something to squeeze into five minutes.

48. Make a physical collection of something. Recipes, photographs, quotes, ticket stubs, pressed leaves, postcards or anything else you like keeping. Give the little things somewhere to live.

49. Have an intentionally ordinary afternoon at home. Wash the sheets, open the windows, make something nice to eat, read for a while and let the day remain uneventful.

50. Let yourself become bored. Do not immediately decide what comes next. Sit outside, lie on the sofa or make another cup of tea and see what your mind eventually wants to do when a screen is not making the decision for it.

Make your own “instead of scrolling” list

The problem with lists like this is that fifty options can quickly become another fifty things you think you should be doing. That is not the point. Most of these ideas will probably not appeal to you and they do not need to.

Instead, choose five.

Pick one thing you can do in five minutes, one for twenty minutes, one for an hour, one for an evening and one for a free afternoon. Write them somewhere physical – the inside of a notebook, a small card beside the sofa or a piece of paper on the fridge.

Your list might be:

5 minutes: make tea and sit by the window
20 minutes: read a chapter
1 hour: walk to the library
Evening: puzzle and music
Afternoon: browse a bookshop and get coffee

Now the next time you catch yourself opening your phone simply because you do not know what else to do, you already have an answer.

You don't have to stop using your phone

I don't think the goal is to create a life in which you never scroll again. Phones are useful and entertaining and sometimes I genuinely want to sit on the sofa and look at completely unimportant things for half an hour. That is allowed.

What I want to notice is the difference between choosing to spend time on my phone and giving it every unclaimed minute simply because it is there.

If you have been wanting to spend a little less time on your screen without turning it into a digital detox, you might also like Less Screen Time, More Real Life, where I wrote about making small changes to your everyday phone habits without creating another set of rules for yourself.

You do not need to fill every quiet moment with a better activity. Some of them can remain empty. But the next time you have ten minutes, an hour or an entire afternoon and automatically reach for your phone, it is worth remembering that there are other things within reach too.

Sometimes you just need to remember what they are.

What do you like to do when you put your phone away? Leave a comment below and share your favourite offline thing to do. I’d genuinely love to hear what your time looks like when scrolling isn’t filling it.