Update My Terms

Update My Terms is a workbook for 14–24 year olds about the relationship they have with their phone — and about getting to the end of the day without feeling quietly drained by the thing in their hand.

This is the part where you would expect to be told to put it down. Delete the apps, lock it in a drawer, win your life back through sheer willpower. That is not where the book goes, because it does not work and everybody knows it does not work.

The promise instead is that you keep the phone, keep the apps, keep the parts you genuinely love, and still end up the one in charge of the relationship rather than the other way around.

Common questions about the book are answered in the frequently asked questions.

Questions readers ask about the workbook. If yours is not here, get in touch.

Is this another digital detox?

No. A detox asks you to stop for a while, then hands you back the same phone, the same habits and the same life that made it hard in the first place.

The rest is real. You come away lighter, and that lift is not imaginary. What didn't change while you were away is the relationship, so the old pattern is waiting exactly where you left it. Which is why almost nobody who has done one has only done one.

This book works the other way round. You keep the phone, you find the one or two places it's genuinely costing you something, and you change those. Nothing gets confiscated. Nothing goes in a drawer.

Will I have to delete my apps or give up my phone?

No. Your phone is how you talk to the people you love, how you work, how you laugh at the end of a long day, and pretending you could just delete all of that was never a serious plan.

Plans built on giving things up run on willpower, and willpower is exactly what a tired person doesn't have at ten at night. So this book never asks you to supply any.

What changes is the arrangement. The things you actually want get a little easier to reach, and the things that pull at you get a little further away. Moving one app off your home screen tonight costs nothing, and you'll feel the difference by tomorrow.

Will it tell me how much screen time is too much?

No, because the number was never the point. Two people can spend the same three hours on the same phone, and one comes away rested, connected and laughing at something a friend sent, while the other comes away flat and can't say why.

A daily total treats those two evenings as identical. They aren't. What matters is what the time did to your sleep, your mood, your focus and your sense of connection, and no figure at the top of a settings screen can tell you that.

So instead of counting tonight, try asking one question when you put the phone down. How did that leave me feeling? Your answer will tell you more than any number ever has.

I've tried this kind of thing before and it never sticks. Why would this be different?

Because what you tried was almost certainly a rule, and rules get broken by tired people at ten at night.

A rule under pressure asks one question: can I get away with breaking this? You will nearly always answer yes, because your willpower is finite and most of it went on the rest of your day. That is not a failure of character. It's arithmetic.

A boundary asks something different: do I still want the thing this is protecting? Almost always, you do. Take one rule you've broken before, phone out of the bedroom, say, and write down what it was actually for. Better sleep. Evenings that end with your own thoughts. That sentence is the boundary, and it survives the tired version of you in a way the rule never did. The whole book is built out of that difference.

Is it for teenagers or adults?

Both, on purpose. It's written for anyone old enough to have the phone, which these days is a sixteen-year-old and a forty-year-old in the same house.

The feelings it works through, the tiredness that sleep doesn't fix, the scroll you didn't decide to start, the evening that quietly disappeared, don't check your age before they arrive. So the book doesn't either. Nothing in it talks down to you, and nothing in it assumes a commute, a mortgage or a curfew.

If you're wondering whether it's for you, there's one honest test. Do you have the phone? Then it's for you.

I'm a parent. Will my teenager actually read it?

Not if it arrives as a punishment. Nobody reads their way out of trouble, and a book handed over after an argument about screens is a book that stays shut.

This one stands a better chance than most, because it starts from what the phone genuinely gives them, the friends, the music, the belonging, and it never asks them to hand any of that over. There is no shame in it anywhere. That tends to get a very different reception from another rule.

The thing that helps most costs nothing: read it yourself first. The patterns inside don't stop at eighteen, and a house where the adults are doing the same work is a house where the book stands a real chance.

What will I actually be doing in it, and how long does it take?

Writing, mostly, by hand. It's a workbook, so it's meant to be written in: underlined, scribbled on, filled out. You'll move through ten short modules, each built around a feeling you'll probably recognise the moment you see it, and each one teaches you a little, then hands you the space to do the real work at your own pace.

As for how long, it doesn't run on a fixed number of days, because your relationship with your phone didn't form on a schedule and it won't change on one. Some people move through in a few weeks. Others keep it on the desk for months and return to the parts that are asking for care. Both of those are the book working.

Where do I start?

With whichever feeling is loudest. The book works through ten of them, the burnout, the distraction, the hours that vanish, and it doesn't insist on an order, because it's your relationship and only you can say where it needs the most care.

Starting where it hurts is not cheating. It's the fastest way to feel the method work, and once you've felt it in one place, the rest of the book gets easier to trust.

When is it out?

Q1 2027. The exact date isn't set yet, and when it is, the waitlist hears it first, along with the cover and the first look inside.

Joining takes a moment and costs nothing. One thing worth knowing before you do: the mailing list is for over-18s. The book isn't, but the list is, so if you're younger, ask a parent to join it and you won't miss a thing.

Do you work with schools?

Yes, and I want to hear from you. Schools have been handed this problem faster than anyone was given time to think about it, and most of the tools available so far amount to taking the phones away. That solves the school day. It teaches nobody what to do at half past three when the phones come back.

That gap is exactly where this book works, and it's where I'd like to work with schools directly.

If you're a teacher, a head of year, or anyone thinking about how this lands in a school, email hello@wearesjx.com and tell me what you're seeing. Those conversations are shaping what comes next.