How To Make Your Phone More Productive

How to Configure Your Jail cell Phone for Productivity and Focus

Rearranged my home screen for #**singletasking**. ~ @mccx

Your phone would be a lot more useful if it did less. You'd become more done. Yous'd take more than focus. Yous'd take more time.

The root problem is that cell phones are designed as if multitasking is a virtue. Notifications, badges, banners, games, inboxes and social media all piece of work to create an environment of interruption and chore switching. Even so, all science says nosotros are much more productive when we are unmarried-tasking.

Linda Stone has the all-time phrase for the multitasking world we live in: continuous partial attention. For many people, the feet of having to pay attention to everything at once causes you to literally hold your breath. Linda'due south term for this: screen apnea.

Last year, inspired by a screen shot from Tristan Harris' iPhone, I completely rearranged my phone. Tristan had a colorless background with only a few boring apps on his home screen. He didn't permit badges or alerts. He'd moved all the addictive apps either off his phone entirely or deep into folders on a second screen. He fabricated a strong case for taking command of how you use your telephone.

Tristan has gone on to requite a TED talk on the dangers of distracting technology and now is lobbying technology makers to modify their ways.

Don't expect for Tristan to convince Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter to decide that your productivity is more important than their own attention dependent revenue. Rather, you should take matters into our own hands.

Information technology is possible to configure your phone to exist a unmarried-tasking device, free of notifications or addictive slot machines. You lot can configure your phone as a tool that you employ on your own terms.

Once you've done that yous volition win back focus, productivity and time.

I continued to experiment over the last year. More recently, I've run my productivity coaching groups through exercises to conform their lives for single-tasking. How they configured their phone was a big office of that.

What I can tell you is that most people will dear the start two exercises beneath, and very few people will be willing to practice the 3rd. That third one is for extra credit.

(How exercise yous feel when yous read the word exercise? Aye, yous're going to have to exercise a few minutes of work upwardly front. But afterward you'll have relieve yourself from hours of mindless telephone usage.)

#ane. Gear up your essential home screen

The gist of the kickoff exercise is to remember of your domicile page equally a group of apps that y'all feel you are in charge of.

If the app triggers whatever mindless checking from yous, motion it to a different screen. We call those type of apps slot machines.

To go started, categorize all the apps on your phone as:

Primary Tool: this helps you lot accomplish defined tasks that yous rely on frequently: getting a ride, finding a location, adding an appointment. There should be no more than five or vi.
Slot Machines: these are the apps that you open and get lost in: electronic mail, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
Aspirations: the things you desire to spend time doing: meditation, yoga, exercise, reading books, or listening to podcasts.

Now, rearrange your phone'south dwelling screen so that it includes only your Chief Tools and your Aspirations.

ALL OTHER APPS GO ONTO A DIFFERENT Page OF YOUR HOME SCREEN.

On an Android, the apps don't demand to live on any screen at all. Take advantage of that.

A note about the role of Aspirations — in behavior design we would phone call these replacement habits. It's going to be hard to cease checking Facebook. So instead, you put a dissimilar, healthier app in reach as your replacement. For me, those are Kindle and Podcast apps. A lot of people who did this exercise with me too included a meditation app similar Headspace or Calm.

The biggest difference between people was how they used text messaging. One group only got occasional urgent text messages from family. This group left the text messaging app on their home screen.

Other group got lots of text letters. They moved this app to a 2d screen.

Here are some examples of what people's home screens looked like after this exercise (mine is the final one with the sleeping dog).

Step #2. Plow off (well-nigh) all notifications

One of the golden rules of unmarried-tasking is that you should check inboxes on your schedule. That goes triple for social media. Your new follower will all the same be there later in the twenty-four hour period.

The purpose of notifications has zip to do with your schedule — they exist to go you lot to bank check an app on somebody else'southward schedule. Turn (almost) all of them off.

Thankfully, turning off notifications is painless to do in bulk.

On an iPhone, become to Settings then Notifications. For nearly all apps, you'll want to toggle Allow Notifications to off. For the few that you do leave on, you'll still want to plow off the Badge Icon.

On Android, y'all'll desire to open your Settings then open the Apps section. From there you can open up each app to toggle notifications.

Of course, in that location are always going to be a few apps that you feel the need to get out notifications on for. But merely to be clear — you're saying "this is an app that I want to interrupt me when I'm doing my most focused work."

Here are my recommendations for what to get out on:

For all delivery apps, exit notifications on. These notifications are merely supposed to come when you lot want them to (i.e., you're standing on the corner trying to get a Lyft). Apps in this category: Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Grubhub, Caviar. Of those, Postmates is the biggest offender of spamming yous with unwanted interruptive notifications. Consider deleting that app.
If y'all go very few text messages, turn off badging. Those are the red dots with numbers. Yous don't need the badge because you'll detect message banners as they come up in. If you get lots of text messages, and then plough off all notifications and treat text letters similar an inbox that you only bank check at set intervals. If you are one of those people sending dozens of text messages throughout the twenty-four hours, and so y'all are crazy and are throwing your life away.
Leave notifications on for your agenda app. Not missing appointments is basically the unabridged bespeak of a jail cell telephone.
Leave notifications on for Maps and Google Maps. These apps only notify you when you are actively getting directions.
Get out notifications on for phone calls. Although, consider turning them off and updating your voicemail to say that telephone calls are a dead medium. My voicemail says: "You have reached my voicemail which means you tried to phone call me which means you are a dinosaur. Delight upgrade your life and attempt me via text or email." (It doesn't really say this.)
For all the notifications that you left on, go back and make sure badges are turned off. Badges are the red dots with numbers in them that give you anxiety that at that place'due south something important going on in that app. You'll alive longer if you lot never see another badge.

Step #3. Delete apps and disable your default spider web browser.

This is the hardcore move.

If you're only checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on a fix schedule, then perchance you lot don't demand them on your phone at all. Delete them.

Delete games and read your Kindle instead.

These are all easy decisions if you did the do higher up nigh having aspirational apps.

The much harder question is what to do nigh your web browser.

The first time I did these exercises I found that Safari on my iPhone was my cheat. I'd log into Facebook from the spider web, stay logged in there, and then constantly go dorsum to check via Safari.

So, every bit an experiment, I turned on parental controls. Apple's parental controls let you disable access to Safari. I'g pretty sure this was meant to go along young kids off the Net. But I'chiliad shameless about any trick that can save me from my own bad habits.

What I found without Safari was that I'd occasionally need to check something on the web. And then I'd download Chrome, do my mindful web browsing, so delete the Chrome app. The problem here is that this feels very clunky.

Thankfully, at that place'south now a great alternative browser for Android and iPhone that is set up perfectly for people who dearest single-tasking, Firefox Focus.

The Focus feature that most helps kill mindless web browsing is that it doesn't keep history. Information technology won't remember what silly sites yous tend to visit. It won't remember passwords. It won't keep you logged in.

This is a web browser that doesn't encourage mindless addicted web browsing. Focus should be your simply selection for using the spider web from your telephone.

To brand this happy, yous've got ii steps.

First, remove or disable your default web browser.

On an iPhone, go to Settings > General > Restrictions. Then plough off access to Safari. Apple calls this setting Restrictions, but I call back of it equally Parental Controls. That mismatch ways I never remember where the setting lives and never find myself turning the restriction off in a moment of weakness.
On an Android, Go to Settings > Apps > All > Chrome and press Disable.

Second, one time you've removed the temptation of mindless web browsing, download Firefox Focus. Information technology's a nice, fast web browser that's a lot safer to use.

If yous accept your telephone set upwardly differently, please let me know in the responses.

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