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This is not a phone.
Or, at least, that's now how you should view
this piece of technology.
Instead, you should look at this thing
as a powerful computer,
nearly as powerful as the other computers you use,
but a more annoying one and a more distracting one,
since it probably goes with you everywhere that you go.
So, like I mentioned in my recent video
about how to focus when you're working from home,
I've been recently trying to redefine my relationship
with my smartphone and that includes doing things
like putting it on the other side of my office
when I'm working during the day,
keeping it on Do Not Disturb for most of the workday
and, once we're able to go out into the world again,
I'm also gonna be experimenting
with keeping it in my backpack when I go out,
instead of having it in my pocket.
But this whole process of redefinition also extends
to the setup of the phone itself,
the apps that are on it and some other settings as well.
So this video is gonna be a kinda what's on my iPhone video.
I'm gonna show you how I organize my phone,
show you some of the useful apps on it
that I think are gonna be interesting to you,
but before I do that, I wanna reorganize my phone
and get rid of some of the things
that don't need to be here.
And I thought it might be useful to do this on a video
so you can kinda see my thought process
and maybe go and do the same thing on your own phone.
If you wanna follow along at home,
here is the series of questions that I ask myself
for each of these apps.
First and foremost, do I actually use this app?
I've got a whole bunch of apps on my phone
that I just have not used for years and for some of them,
I don't even remember downloading them.
Now, there is one exception to this question,
which is if you feel reasonably certain
that you're gonna use an app again in the future,
even if you're not using it currently right now.
So, for instance, this UDisc app is an app
that actually shows you the location of Frisbee golf parks,
or disc golf parks, and this is something that I wanna go do
with my fiancee at some point,
so I'm gonna go ahead and keep that app here.
Second question, is this app
needlessly duplicating functionality
that I have on another device?
And I know of a couple of examples already
that I can get rid of on my phone.
I have MuseScore, which is a piano sheet music app.
I've got that on my iPad,
which functions much more like a piece of sheet music
than a tiny little phone when I'm practicing piano,
so I don't need that on this phone.
Additionally, I really know
that I don't need the YouTube Studio app.
This is an app that lets me look at analytics on my videos,
which also just causes anxiety sometimes.
So I think it's a much better idea
for me to go proactively look at analytics
when I think it is actually strategically a good idea
to do so on my computer.
And this is something
that you should be keeping in mind in general.
You wanna make sure that you're working proactively,
not reactively, as much as you possibly can.
So if you have apps on your phone
that are constantly pulling at your attention
and not really giving you that much value,
then you may not really need them in the first place.
So the third question that I think is useful to ask
is are the benefits of any specific app,
are they outweighed by the drawbacks?
Y'know, we have such an easy time downloading apps
onto our phone that we often will justify doing so
because it just gives us one tiny benefit.
And in Cal Newport's book "Deep Work",
he calls this the any-benefit approach,
where people add a tool or process
or really anything to our lives
just because it has, y'know, any kind of benefit.
And we don't stop to think what are the drawbacks
and are they worse
than the benefits that we're getting here?
So, in the case of Twitter,
I would say this pulls at my attention
more than I would like it to
and, again, it's just duplicating functionality
that I have on my computer.
I can easily tweet.
I don't need to do it in line at the grocery store.
So it is going bye bye.
And the final question that I ask myself
after I've gone through all the others is
is this app a time suck and, if so,
can I mitigate against it?
So a good example here is the YouTube app.
I'm keeping this on my phone because,
I actually pay for YouTube Premium for this purpose,
I like to put videos on and turn the screen off
and kind of use them as podcasts.
And then I will go for long bike rides
or long skating sessions and I will listen to videos
on my phone sometimes.
But I don't want it to be a time suck.
So there are some things that you can do
if you want to keep an app on your phone
but you want to mitigate against that possibility.
First and foremost, like I mentioned earlier in the video,
it's really good if you can just keep your phone
away from you as much as possible.
Keep it on the other side of the room
or in a different room.
Put it in your backpack if you're going places.
But beyond that, on iOS specifically,
there is a function called Screen Time and with Screen Time,
you can do a couple of interesting things.
First and foremost, you can set app limits
either for specific apps or for groupings of apps.
So if I turn this on,
I can say 15 minutes of Instagram every day
is a limitation that I wanna set,
but I could also just say all Social Networking
has a limit of, let's just say, 30 minutes.
So this would let me quickly check things,
maybe post a couple of things since that is part of my job,
but then it's not going to be a problem
for the rest of the day.
Additionally with Screen Time, you can add downtime.
So you can just say the phone is basically not usable
from ten p.m. to seven a.m., which is pretty useful.
And there's one other really,
really powerful mitigation tactic,
but I'm gonna talk about that later on in the video.
For now, I'm finally done going through my phone,
getting rid of apps that I know I don't need
and this is now how my phone is organized.
And if you've seen my previous iPhone videos,
it doesn't look a whole lot different.
I've got my most frequently accessed apps on the home page.
I think including the home row here, we've got 24 apps,
which I'll kind of go over in a second,
and then over on this page, we have our folders.
I have added a music folder,
so I can very easily access a couple of music-specific apps,
and also 'cause I know some of you are gonna be annoyed
by the fact that I don't have complete rows here
and there's one just sort of hangin' out
in a second row there.
So a couple of different apps
that I want to focus on here and highlight.
Number one, Roam QC.
So in my previous video,
I talked about Roam Research and how I'm using it
as my main research note taking app right now.
And, like I said, there is not a Roam app.
There's no Roam iPhone app, no Roam Android app,
but there is the ability to create links from Safari
to specific websites and put them on your home screen.
So that is exactly what I've done
and this basically just launches a Roam tab
and lets me easily Quick Capture an idea that I have
and then sync it to my Roam database later.
Another really frequently used one,
possibly one of the most useful apps on my phone,
is actually the stock Voice Memos app.
I get random ideas for videos or something I wanna say
in a video that I'm already working out comes to me
and I like to talk it out into my phone.
Another quite frequently used app is Notion.
I basically run my entire business out of Notion
and I also write all my video scripts there.
So once I'm done with a video script on my computer,
I will often open it up on my phone to do practice runs.
And sometimes I actually use the phone
as a little bit of an assistance device.
I'll put it up on a music stand,
especially if I'm using my iPad for something else.
But I've actually got my iPad with Notion
doing the exact same thing over here,
which I'll just show you, it's just sitting over here
a little bit out of frame.
And we do have a couple of fun apps on my home screen.
Fender Tune is the app that I use to tune my guitar.
It works perfectly well.
I always use the auto tune function and I can just,
number one, I can tap it to hear
what the string is supposed to sound like
(open guitar strings ring out)
and then it will automatically tell me if I'm in tune
when I actually strum the strings of my guitar.
Also got an app called Reelgood here.
So I often get the idea to watch a movie
or I get the idea to watch a TV show
or I'll get a recommendation
and I used to just shove these things
into Todoist or Evernote,
but this app actually lets you get
kind of like a dedicated place
to track the things you wanna watch.
So I will just track movies that I wanna see
and this kinda lets me know that, oh yeah,
I did wanna see that movie and then I'll go mark it
and say that I did watch it if I did,
but I haven't watched Minority Report yet.
Don't spoil it in the comments.
Actually, I can't look at the comments now.
Uh-oh.
Strava I use for tracking my cycling distance
and my running distance.
Unfortunately, it does not track inline distance
along with calories, so I'm kinda having to choose
between one of the two
and I'm kinda leaning towards calories right now,
since I do a lot of weird circles
and don't actually go for distance every time when I skate.
But the really, really big one here is TrueCoach.
So I started working with a lifting coach recently.
His name is Matt Reynolds
and he runs a business called Barbell Logic,
if you are curious.
And essentially four times a week, I have to work out
and not only do I have to work out,
I have to film my final sets
and I have to actually send in my final sets
and all the reps that I did to my coach
and then he breaks down my form.
- [Reynolds] Overhead press looks great.
This is the right sort of rotation that we want.
- But there's also a huge amount
of built-in accountability there.
Now, there's not any money on the line or anything,
but the fact that I respect my coach
and the fact that he is expecting me to get my videos in
on the day that I have an assigned workout
means that I absolutely get my workouts done.
So this apps just kind of makes that a really easy process.
I film it with my phone, I trim the videos,
I upload them, I give him a little bit of feedback
if there's anything that I have a concern about,
and, just as with the the Apple Watch here,
this helps me to stay active and also make real progress
in my lifts and my overall strength.
Now, earlier in the video,
I mentioned that there was one more trick you could use
to mitigate against distracting apps
you chose to keep on your phone, such as YouTube,
which I do have legitimate uses for sometimes
but it can also be a bit of a time suck.
Well, if you go into the Settings app,
you can find the app in question, which is YouTube, here,
go to this search area, and we can actually disable it
from showing in search and disable the app
from showing in search as well.
And once you've done that, now when you swipe down,
you are not going to see it in that search suggestions area.
And if you search for it,
it's not going to be there either.
So, again, it's just creating a little bit
of increased friction so it doesn't become a distraction.
Now, I'm talking about YouTube specifically.
Other than its potential for being such a distraction,
one of the big gripe that a lot of people,
including myself, have with it is, well, the algorithm
and how it makes it difficult for creators to branch out
and try new things,
which is why I recently got together
with a bunch of other fellow creators and built Nebula.
If you haven't heard about it,
Nebula is a creator-owned streaming service
where you can watch all of my videos, without ads,
and where myself and other creators
have a place to branch out and, well, try new things.
And alongside all of my content,
you'll also find other creators there,
like Wendover Productions, Ali Abdaal,
Lindsay Ellis, Legal Eagle, and dozens more.
And, like I said, we are trying out new things.
For instance, my friend Brian from Real Engineering
has a series on the logistics in D-Day,
Tom Scott recently released this awesome game show
called Money, and I even have an exclusive episode
on a series called Working Titles,
all about the secrets hidden in the intro of Gravity Falls,
which is one of my favorite TV shows of all time.
But the best part is that we teamed up with CuriosityStream
and bundled Nebula with it.
So when you sign up at CuriosityStream.ocm/Thomas,
you'll not only get access
to thousands of high-quality documentaries
and other titles on CuriosityStream,
like the Science of Sleep
and David Attenborough's Light on Earth,
which is a deep dive into bioluminescence,
one of the coolest concepts in all of nature,
but you'll also get free access to Nebula
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So, once again, head over to CuriosityStream.com/Thomas
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Thank you for watching this video as well, by the way.
Hopefully you found this helpful
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and I think that's it for my ending spiel.
So, y'know, if you want, don't do any of that
and go do exactly what it is that you wanna do
'cause I'm not your dad.