Here is something odd. The same person who cannot stop checking their phone while it sits on the desk has almost no trouble when it is charging in the next room. Same person. Same day. Same willpower.

So the thing that changed was not the person. It was the distance.

What actually happens in that moment

You are reading something hard. It stops making sense. That feeling is uncomfortable, and your hand moves toward the phone before you have decided anything. There was no decision. There was a reach.

Now imagine the phone is on a shelf near the door. The same discomfort arrives, your hand moves, and it finds nothing. In the second it takes to notice that, the urge has already passed and you are back on the page.

You did not resist anything. There was simply nothing to reach for.

Why every app failed you

Screen Time, focus apps, greyscale, app timers. They all add friction inside the phone. But that friction is one tap deep, and your thumb crosses it in half a second without your brain getting involved.

A wall that a reflex can walk through is not a wall.

The cheapest version of this is free

Put your phone in another room for one hour tonight. That is the whole idea, and it costs nothing. If it works and you keep doing it, you do not need to buy anything from us.

Most people cannot keep it up, and the reason is always the same. Life keeps needing the phone. A call from home. A delivery. So you make one exception, then another, and by Thursday the phone is back on the desk.

What we built instead

Mohar keeps the distance but keeps the phone. Tap your phone on it and the apps you chose stop opening. Everything you left off the list works as it always did. Leave Mohar in the kitchen and those apps stay shut until you go and get it.

The walk to the kitchen is the entire product. It is not much. It is just more than nothing, and nothing is exactly what stood between you and the feed before.

Try it tonight, for free

Before you sit down, put your phone in another room. Not face down on the table. Another room, door shut. Then notice two things. How many times your hand goes to the empty spot on the desk. And how quickly the reaching stops once your hand finds nothing there. Usually inside forty minutes.

The useful version of this idea is not be further from your phone. It is be further from four apps and no further from anything else. Once you separate those two things, the problem gets a great deal easier.

More from the Journal