I’m certain I’m not alone with this sentiment, but over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that I kinda hate my iPhone.

What started as a really cool device, full or promise has become one big festering neon distraction (name that tune!) and I have come to resent it for being a constant source of temptation, where I would mindlessly scroll for hours on-end.

I noticed that I would spend my time mindlessly scrolling, picking it up to look at it during every waking second that was filled with silence. Each time, an invitation to become distracted.

I had come to hate it. This stupid phone, and it’s stupid distractions. Every time I pick it up, I risk reading some kind of horrible news, or hilarious meme that distracts me down a rabbit hold of funny, yet meaningless fluff. Or worse, a doom spiral that lets my anxiety take over. Either way, it’s hard to bounce back from that.

I’ve considered those new fangled “dumb phones” like The Light Phone, but I think they just…ugh. They go too far. There’s SO much more I want to do with my phone that these things…don’t do.

• I do still want to be able to look things up.
• I do really love that I am brushing up on my Spanish.
• It’s a key piece of my time budgeting system
• I love my weather app
• I still need to actually text and call friends and family.
• I use my phone to pay for stuff using apple wallet
• I like Podcasts, music, & audiobooks
• I appreciate getting notified on my calendar.
• A litany of other things, like online banking, paying bills, managing my cloud drives, setting my coffee cup’s temperature, adjusting the thermostat, managing airline tickets, ordering takeout, getting directions, and the list goes on and on

All of this just made me feel…trapped, and I fucking hated it.

Billions of dollars have been poured into making my phone the ultimate distraction machine. It’s designed by some of the smartest minds in the world, all working tirelessly to keep me scrolling, tapping, and wasting time. Every app, every notification, every carefully engineered dopamine hit is built to hijack my attention and keep me glued to the screen.

But you know what, I chose those distraction apps. I chose to allow Instagram, YouTube, email, Slack, ClickUp, X, Mastodon, Facebook, and a series of low-quality mobile games on my device. They weren’t forced on me.

So, I made another choice. I chose to take control over my phone. Choosing what is allowed access to my pocket. And the first thing to do was set up some ground rules on what my phone was for. Or more specifically, what it’s not for.

What My Phone Is Not For

I’ve realized that fundamentally, the problem is that I was using my phone for consumption. The best thing I could do for myself was simply remove any forms of consumption from my phone.

1. My phone is not for consuming entertainment.
2. My phone is not for social media.
3. My phone is not for games. I have plenty of great options for that, and none of them need to fit in my pocket.
4. My phone is not for work communication. It can wait. If it can’t, I have a trusted person who has my number who will call me.
5. My phone is not for email of any sort. It can wait.
6. My phone is not my todo list.

By following these rules, there’s not much to look at on my phone anymore.

What’s crazy is, for weeks after removing these apps, I found myself reflexively grabbing it, opening it, unlocking it, and realizing there’s…nothing I need to look at. Nothing to “check”. It was upsetting at first, but eventually I found myself smiling when I did this. “Saved myself two hours” I’d think, as I promptly locked it and went back to what I was doing. Eventually, I stopped, but it took a while. I still do it sometimes. I check the weather a lot now 🤣.

What My Phone Is For

The key use of my phone is not about taking in content anymore. Consumption on my phone is limited to educational content, photos of my family and travels, podcasting, and audiobooks.

1. My phone is for budgeting my time.
2. My phone is for growth and education.
3. My phone is for critical, time-sensitive notifications.
4. My phone is for talking to family.
5. My phone is for publishing, but not consuming.
6. My phone is for helping me keep everything in context.

Getting Around The Apps

The primary function of my phone revolves around either gathering information, or providing a way for me to publish content online, but this doesn’t mean I’m not on social media at all. It doesn’t mean that I don’t check my email, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t read Slack. It simply means that I have decided that those things have a “place” – and it’s not my pocket.

The problem is, sometimes I’ll want to publish a social media post on-the-go. Or perhaps I have a sudden thought and want to capture it to remember it later. Normally, you’d solve these problems with their respective native apps – but that’s exactly how you end up distracted. How many times have you opened social media to post something real quick, only to get sidetracked by the feed? There be dragons in those apps. Best to leave them in their lair.

Instead, I make extensive use of my iPhone’s automations, and tools like Zapier to help me do the things I want to do.

In the examples above, I just wanted to post something to social media – I don’t want to actually…be on social. I just want to jot something down, hit send, and be on my merry way. Apple’s automation functionality makes this surprisingly simple to set up, and if you’re using Zapier, you can set up a zap to handle the tricky parts (authentication, etc).

So now, if I want to publish a social post, I can do so using the WordPress app, which then publishes to my social accounts automatically using a plugin and some cobbled together Zapier zaps. (I’ve been working on owning my platform for years now.) This allows me to be on social, without having that oh-so tempting app directly in my pocket.

Another example – I do not have my task management system for work on my phone (again, there be dragons!). The last thing I need is a constant reminder of how much stuff I have to do, and it’s bad for my mental health to have access to that.

I do, however, want to be able to add something to my todo list inbox to review later,

So, I’ve set up automations that allow me to jot down a TODO item bullet-journal style. I even have one set up where I can dictate roughly the TODO to ChatGPT, and let it parse my audio it into an actual task that gets saved in my task management system automatically for me. These tasks simply gets saved into an “inbox” list, that I review when I am looking over all of my inboxes (including social media, email, and Slack).

My Daily Dashboard

With all of this, I’ve discovered that the best use of my homescreen is to fill it up with widgets. This has essentially turned my phone into an ongoing dashboard. At one quick glance, I can see everything I need to know about how my day is going.

The Internet is A Place, Again (Mostly)

I don’t remember where, but somewhere, I heard this phrase from someone and it really stuck with me. There was a time where the internet was confined to a box in a dedicated “computer room”. It wasn’t in our pocket, and always accessible to us. Most of us celebrated when we had the internet in our phones, but I think in our experimentation and discovery of what we could do with this capability, we never fully understood what we should do.

There are definitely things that should still have a place, and really that’s all I’ve done here. I’ve relegated the things that, by being in my pocket, take away from my experience of life, and my personal well-being. I value social media, video games, entertainment, and I love what I do for a living. But that doesn’t mean they should be in my pocket, and in-fact, I find that I can enjoy all of them so, so much more when they’re not.