Urge surfing: how to ride out the urge to open an app
7 min read
Urge surfing means riding out an urge instead of obeying it or fighting it. You notice the pull to open the app, find where it sits in your body, and watch it rise, peak and ease, breath by breath, without doing what it says. You don't have to beat an urge, only outlast it. The technique comes from relapse-prevention research, and it takes about a minute to try. There's a walkthrough below you can do right now.
What is urge surfing?
An urge isn't a line that keeps climbing. It builds, peaks and then, if nothing feeds it, starts to ease off on its own, like a wave. Most of the discomfort sits near the top of that curve, which is exactly when giving in feels most necessary. Urge surfing is the skill of staying on the wave through that top part.
The technique was developed by psychologist G. Alan Marlatt as part of relapse prevention, his approach to helping people keep a change going after they've made it (Marlatt and Gordon's 1985 book Relapse Prevention). It's also one of the practices in Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, a group program built by Sarah Bowen, Neha Chawla, Joel Grow and Marlatt. Those programs were built for substance use, but the urge to check your phone works the same way: a cue, a pull, a tap.
Why riding it beats giving in, or fighting it
Every time you open the app at the peak of an urge, the urge gets what it wanted, and your brain learns to send it again, a little sooner next time. So giving in keeps the loop running.
Fighting doesn't work much better. Telling yourself "don't think about it" tends to keep the thought in the spotlight. In Daniel Wegner's well-known experiments, people asked not to think about a white bear kept thinking about it, and when they were later allowed to, it came back even more often. An urge you wrestle with tends to stay loud.
Urge surfing takes a third path. You stop arguing with the urge and get curious about it instead. You treat it as something happening in you, not an order you have to follow. And every wave you ride makes the next one easier to read.
How to do urge surfing: a 60-second walkthrough
Try this the next time you reach for your phone without deciding to, or right now if you can feel the pull to open something. You don't need to sit still or close your eyes.
- Stop and name it (about 10 seconds). Put the phone face down or keep your thumb still. Say it plainly, out loud or in your head: "I'm having the urge to open Instagram." Naming a feeling puts a little space between you and it; in a brain-imaging study, Matthew Lieberman and colleagues found that putting feelings into words dampened the brain's alarm response.
- Find it in your body (about 15 seconds). Where is the urge, physically? A restless thumb, tight chest, a buzz behind the eyes, a lean toward the phone. Pick the strongest spot and put your attention there.
- Rate it (about 5 seconds). How strong is it, from 1 to 10? Just a number. There's no right answer.
- Ride the breath (about 25 seconds). Breathe slowly in and out, and use the breath like a surfboard. With each breath, notice what the urge is doing: is it rising, holding, shifting somewhere else, softening? Don't push it away and don't follow it. If your mind starts arguing ("just one quick look"), notice that too, and come back to the body.
- Rate it again and choose (about 5 seconds). What's the number now? Whether it went down, stayed put or went up, you just stayed with an urge without acting on it. Now decide what you'll actually do next, on purpose.
Tip: One minute is a start, not a limit. If the wave is still high, do another round, or stand up and do something with your hands for five minutes. A walk to the kitchen counts.
Urge surfing for the urge to check your phone
Phone urges are short, frequent and often half-asleep: your thumb is already moving before you've noticed. That makes the first step, noticing, the hardest part. A few things help:
- Catch the reach, not the scroll. The best moment to surf is the second your hand moves toward the phone, before the app is open. Once you're in the feed, the feed is doing the deciding.
- Learn your waves. Most people have a few regular triggers: waking up, waiting in line, getting stuck on a task, lying in bed. Expect the wave there and it's easier to spot.
- Use the same words every time. A fixed phrase ("there's the wave") becomes a cue of its own.
- Make the reach take longer. Moving the app off your home screen, turning off its alerts or locking it adds a gap between the urge and the tap. Every extra second gives the wave room to crest.
Does urge surfing work?
The evidence is promising but early. In a 2009 study, Sarah Bowen and Alan Marlatt worked with 123 college students who smoked and wanted to change that. Everyone was exposed to cues designed to set off the urge to smoke; one group got brief mindfulness instructions based on urge surfing. The two groups didn't differ in how strong their urges were. But over the following seven days, the urge-surfing group smoked significantly fewer cigarettes.
That's the point of the technique: it may not make the urge weaker at first, but it changes what you do with it. The authors called their results preliminary, and most of the research is on smoking and substance use rather than phones. Still, it costs nothing to try, and it works anywhere.
When it doesn't go smoothly
- "The urge got stronger when I paid attention to it." That can happen, especially at first, because you're noticing something you used to act on instantly. Keep breathing; you're near the top of the wave.
- "My mind kept wandering." Fine. Coming back is the practice. Each return counts.
- "I gave in anyway." That's one wave, not the whole ocean. What you noticed is useful for next time. Here's what to do after a slip →
A guided break, right at the peak
Urge surfing is easier when the app isn't one tap away. Pactroll locks the apps you pick with iOS Screen Time, and they stay locked until you decide otherwise, even when Pactroll is closed. When the wave hits, tap "I feel the urge" and Pactroll walks you through a short guided break: name what's going on, then five minutes doing something else. If the urge is still there after two rounds, it's your call: the apps open for 15 minutes, then lock again on their own. Urge surfing is also one of the techniques in Pactroll's Toolkit.
Get Pactroll on the App StoreFAQ
What is urge surfing?
Urge surfing is a technique from relapse-prevention research, developed by psychologist G. Alan Marlatt. Instead of acting on an urge or fighting it, you watch it like a wave: where you feel it, how strong it is, how it changes from breath to breath, until it crests and eases on its own.
How do you do urge surfing?
Stop and name the urge, find where it sits in your body, rate it from 1 to 10, then breathe slowly and watch how it shifts without doing what it says. After about a minute, rate it again and decide what to do. You don't have to make it go away; you only have to stay with it without feeding it.
Does urge surfing actually work?
The evidence is promising but early. In a 2009 study of 123 college smokers, Bowen and Marlatt found that people taught a brief urge-surfing approach felt the same urges as everyone else but smoked fewer cigarettes over the next week. Most research so far is on smoking and substance use rather than phones.
What if the urge doesn't go away?
It doesn't have to vanish. The goal is to change how you respond to it, not to make it disappear. If it's still strong after a few minutes, add distance: put the phone in another room, step outside, or set a five-minute timer and decide when it rings.
Is urge surfing the same as ignoring the urge?
No. Ignoring or pushing a thought away tends to keep it in the spotlight, as Daniel Wegner's thought-suppression experiments showed. Urge surfing does the opposite: you pay close attention to the urge, with curiosity, and simply don't act on it.