Less distracting technology

The approach I’m having is to use a smartphone (it’s too useful) but try to limit distractions. Limit installed apps to useful ones. Keep notifications to a minimum and batch them whenever possible. Remove widgets, which give me reasons to keep coming back to my phone “just to check one thing.

Limiting apps to the useful ones means removing all social media. Mastodon is the one I really enjoy using and with Phanpy “Catch up” mode it’s possible to make it minimally distracting but not having it at all reduces the number of times I pick up my phone.

Software solutions

Solutions like Screen Time and oneSec don’t really work for me. I quickly get inserting the passcode or waiting burned into my muscle memory making these apps not really effective.

Hardware solutions

I think using a mainstream smartphone is better than e.g. a Light Phone. Being limited to phone calls and SMS would make the phone pretty much useless for me. That would also be a step back from the security and privacy standpoint because it won’t let me use e2e encrypted apps. While certain apps are bad, I find some of them to be really useful. Having the possibility to add them is a great advantage smartphone have. This pretty much rules out also BoringPhone.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out for any comment or question.