- I don't know about you,
but I have been spending way too much time
on my phone lately.
It has become quite the problem.
Today, I want to do a bit of a clear out
of my phone, and get rid of all the apps
that I'm not using,
and just try and optimize this device
that I feel like I always have on me
for productivity, rather than for mindless scrolling.
I thought it'd be interesting to film this
for you to see the decisions that I'm making,
the apps that I keep on my phone,
and what's important to me to be able
to have quick access to in my pocket.
So with that said, let's get into it,
let's clean up my freaking iPhone.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so here's a look
at my current phone home screen.
I have not made use of widgets
or anything like that yet.
And I'm sure that these little notification numbers
are probably gonna annoy people,
but don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it.
I'm not, so you shouldn't be either.
You will see, I don't have Twitter or Instagram
on my home screen,
'cause I was finding it was way too easy
for me to just open phone, click on it.
But even moving them off the home screen
hasn't helped a lot,
because all I, I don't know,
figured out how to do was just swipe down
and type Tw,
and then boom, we can get into the Twitter app.
I do have time limits set to social media.
I think they're set to like, 15 minutes.
I hit Ignore Limit a lot,
but I mostly set the limits
so that I don't catch myself
losing a large chunk of time
on social media accidentally,
because that limit's there to tell me.
Maybe I need to shorten it even more.
I don't know,
that might come out as part of this.
Anyway, I've got many, many, many screens of apps,
and I have very little folder organization happening.
So let's go through and start,
(chuckling) yeah, just deleting the ones
that I no longer use.
Okay, we do not need
the Anti-Social Social Club app.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I did a lot of clearing up.
Man, I have a lot of apps on there.
Now I'm gonna go through
and just start grouping apps together.
Not necessarily deciding what is a priority
to be on the home screen, or whatever right now.
But yeah, we'll just do some grouping,
and go from there.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so I'm down
to just two screens technically.
Although now I have a lot more folders and shit.
I wanna start thinking through
what do I really want to see on my homepage
when I first open my phone?
And one thing that I know
I want to add is,
I believe the way to add it
is by holding down here, clicking plus,
I want a widget for screen time,
(chuckling) because I feel like that would help me
to just keep it top of mind
how long I'm spending on my phone, you know?
So let's add Screen Time.
And yeah, I mean, Daily Activity,
that'll be fine, put that in there.
Okay, my first widget.
Fun times.
What other widgets are available.
It'd be handy to just look at my phone
and see what the time is around the world.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna put that on the second page,
it's a little bit obnoxious.
But it would still be helpful
to be able to see.
What is this?
Smart Stack.
(upbeat music)
Not super helpful.
We're gonna delete that one. (chuckling)
(upbeat music)
I think I want my approach to be
that my home screen is useful things
that I need quick access to.
So, I think I'm gonna keep
my bank apps on here.
Maybe I don't need the calendar anymore,
because we've got their widget
that I can tap into it with, right?
I'm gonna make my second screen,
so maybe we'll move the time zone thing
out of the way, I don't know.
But I'm gonna make the second screen
stuff that I can start doing.
I could listen to an audio book,
I could do some writing,
I could do some language learning.
You get the idea.
Still not sure where to put Dispo.
Like I don't know where that fits
into my use yet.
Ooh, is there a widget for Hue light bulbs?
That would be very handy.
No.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I feel like this is seeming okay
as a home screen.
We'll see as I go onto the next side,
if there's anything else I decide
I wanna add.
But we've got the main,
let me just switch WhatsApp and Phone actually,
'cause I'm more likely to use WhatsApp.
The main stuff that I'm gonna
quickly open my phone for up here,
and then other stuff that I want access to
on a regular basis down below as well.
We could move these last three
onto the next screen.
I don't know, we'll see.
We'll see when we come to that.
I'm not loving this.
I wonder if it's the style of the widget.
I don't know.
Just don't like it.
I think we're gonna get rid of that one.
(upbeat music)
I feel like that's slightly better,
I don't know.
The goal of having this
is so that I can quickly just work out,
okay, what's the time
in my teammates' time zones?
Yeah, I don't know.
I think it would be useful.
Let's bring Health up to an earlier screen,
'cause we wanna be seen to be focusing on that.
(laughing)
And right now, because of the times
that we're in, this Radar COVID app
needs to move up.
Okay, I'm gonna put my regular finance apps next.
I hid one away in a folder
that I've decided I don't wanna hide away
in a folder.
You, Moneybox, come out. (chuckling)
I think I'm gonna bring out Hue,
and then have this be like the folders screen,
if that makes sense.
Apart from Health, Health can stay. (chuckling)
Oh yeah, I forgot, with the new update of Apple
you can actually like,
yeah, just remove it from the screen.
Hmm, I forgot about that.
Maybe I wanna do that
for most of the rest of these.
I don't know.
That would be quite the change.
So maybe we'll keep it as it is for now. (chuckling)
In fact, let's just bring out this one
and this one.
(upbeat music)
So here is where I've ended up.
With the home screen,
the first thing I see when I look at my phone
has the core stuff that I need to be aware of.
Namely, my Calendar and the Screen Time,
the weather is there
mostly for interest's sake.
I always wanna know what the weather is doing.
Might end up getting rid of that,
because it is what I use a widget on my watch
for as well.
Then I have the core, quick things
I need to access here as well.
Like Maps, Camera, Clock is mostly used
for timer and stuff.
And this is a calculator,
that I paid like five bucks for,
because it had pretty colors,
and that's pretty much (laughing) the only reason.
Tried to keep this home screen really functional.
So it's also got the Settings,
FaceTime, Phone, WhatsApp,
so that I'm focusing
on keeping in touch with people
through this device,
'cause that is what a phone
is meant to be for, after all.
And then Spotify and Overcast
are the most common things
that I'll need to click on,
as well as Hue,
for quickly turning off the lights
before we're about to watch a movie.
The second page is more like utility stuff
and I probably, I don't know,
might end up going more into organization
here in future.
My main accounts that I need to access.
Just being able to see these time zones
might be useful.
I don't know, the design isn't vibing
with me a lot.
So we'll see how that goes.
Busuu is an alternative to Duolingo,
it's what I use for learning Spanish.
Some quick Spanish lessons.
So I've got that, or Audible there,
if I want to be doing something,
I hope that this
is what it'll encourage me to do.
And then Ulysses is an app
that I use for writing.
So I could open that at any time
I wanna jot down some ideas for my book.
Same with Notion,
I keep a lot of content organization stuff
in there too.
And then this screen full of my folders
is where it's either time-waster-y type stuff
that I really don't need to be accessing a lot,
like social media,
the YouTube app,
consuming content, that sort of thing.
Or, things like travel and transport
that I'm clearly not using a whole lot
at the moment.
Ooh, one thing actually,
as I'm looking at this,
that I do wanna bring out.
I'm gonna put this one, Ambiance,
on the home page,
because this is a really helpful app
for me when I'm focusing on my writing.
It's like a white noise,
coffee shop noise app.
So yeah, I'm gonna give it pride of place there.
'Cause I think that seeing it on my home screen
might remind me that, you know,
that's what I use for writing,
so do I wanna be doing some writing right now,
instead of scrolling Twitter?
That's the hope anyway.
All of this is trying to trick myself
into being productive, essentially.
So, I know, just like last time,
I'm probably gonna develop hacks
and ways around this,
but hey, all we can do is try. (chuckling)
Thank you for watching this video.
I hope that you might've found it
a little bit interesting
to see how I'm organizing my phone,
what apps that I use most often,
and maybe it inspired you
to do a bit of digital decluttering for yourself.
I don't know.
Let me know in the comments
what your relationship
has been like lately with your phone.
Are you spending way too much time on it
like I am?
I think it's a problem
that a lot of us are facing
(chuckling) during this pandemic.
Thanks for watching,
have a good week,
and I'll see you in my next video,
which I promise
will be a lot more design focused.
See you then.
Bye.
(upbeat music)