You sit down after dinner for five minutes, pick up your phone, and suddenly forty-five minutes have gone.

The problem is not always a lack of discipline. Often, the phone is simply the easiest available activity. A better strategy is to make another option just as easy.

Pinterest’s 2026 trend data shows growing interest in screen-free and analogue activities, including a 200% year-over-year rise in searches for “screen free activities”. Source: Pinterest.

1. Start a dot painting

Leave the canvas somewhere easy to reach and work on one small area. You do not need to finish anything tonight. The point is simply to begin.

2. Read twenty pages

“Read more” is vague. Twenty pages is specific. Small, defined goals are easier to start when you are tired.

3. Work on a jigsaw puzzle

If possible, leave it set up between sessions. A hobby with almost no setup has a much better chance of competing with your phone.

4. Cook something slowly

Bread, pasta, dumplings, soup or a dessert can turn cooking from a chore into the evening itself.

5. Draw badly on purpose

Use a pencil and draw whatever is in front of you. Removing the expectation that it needs to be good makes drawing much easier to enjoy.

6. Write by hand

A journal entry, a letter, a list of places you want to visit or tomorrow’s plan. Paper creates a different pace from typing into another app.

7. Play cards or a board game

This is especially useful when two people want to spend time together without sitting beside one another looking at separate screens.

8. Make something worth keeping

Embroidery, model building, ceramics and dot painting have one useful thing in common: the result stays after the evening ends.

9. Create one phone-free hour

Do not begin with an entire weekend. Put the phone somewhere else for one hour and decide what you will do before that hour begins.

Make the alternative visible

Keep the book on the coffee table. Leave the puzzle out. Put your creative kit where you can see it. Friction works both ways: if your hobby takes ten minutes to set up and your phone takes one second to unlock, the phone will usually win.

If you want an easy creative place to start, browse our bestsellers or see how dot painting works.