SMARTPHONE SPECIAL .......STEPS to turn your handset into an efficient companion

STEPS to turn your handset into an efficient companion

There is always something to check in our smartphones — new emails, new messages, a Facebook notification saying someone liked your photo. As our attention skips from notifications to apps, our lives get hijacked by our handsets and companies who have apps on it. So here is how to un-hijack your life from your smartphone and turn it into a productivity companion:

STEP 1: Understand how your smartphone has been hijacked

As new technologies are reshaping society and we are getting into an ‘attention economy’, products and services only tend to get more persuasive over time. Tristan Harris, former product philosopher at Google points out, “Just like the food industry manipulates our innate biases for salt, sugar and fat with perfectly engineered combinations, the tech industry bulldozes our innate biases for social reciprocity, social approval, social comparison and novelty-seeking.” This is how our minds get hijacked.

STEP 2: Purge

Go through all the apps on your phone, ask yourself — does this app improves your life in any way? Does the fantasy cricket app, Candy Crush, or getting the update about every single ball bowled in IPL to help you live a better life? Delete everything that doesn’t improve your life. The purpose here is to turn your phone into a productivity companion, so install a good podcast app, or read e-books with Google books or Kindle in those circumstances.

STEP 3: Take control of the home screen

Your phone’s home screen is a piece of screen real estate that you see numerous times a day. And every app in that home screen is a source of temptation. According to Harris, you should only have “apps that you drive, but they don’t drive you” on your home screen. The three rules for organising your home screen are:

› Keep tools: Apps that help you with specific end-to-end tasks.

Examples include calendar app, to-do apps, taxi-hailing apps, Google Maps, and note-taking app.

› Keep aspirational apps: These are apps that will represent the things you want to accomplish. For example, if your goal is to learn a new language, have Duolingo on the home screen.

›Move everything else: Our phones have more than one home screen, so move all the apps left to another screen. The fewer the number of icons our eyes have to scan when we unlock our phone, the less work our mind has to do.

STEP 4: Get notifications under control

Notifications are the biggest culprit in ruining your attention. Hence, the next step is to go to the settings of your phone and turn notifications off for everything, except for someone you know wants to reach you and for calendar and reminder apps. Also turn off vibration in the notification settings for apps and services, except when someone important wants to contact you.

STEP 5: Stop using your phone for everything

Your phone can do everything from taking photos and videos to putting Snapchat filters over your face, and there lies the problem. Define what the purpose of your smartphone is and use it accordingly. And get alternative gadgets to make your life peaceful. For example, by getting an alarm clock, you are eliminating the circumstances for keeping your phone near your bed.

lifehacker.co.in

ETP 4DEC17