This is a project I've been working on for a while now, and thought I'd share progress and a gauntlet. I've been working to make my cell phone as boring as possible while still keeping useful functionality.
What this means, practically, is that I require the following while I'm out and about:
- Google Hangouts. My wife & I use this extensively to communicate.
- Maps (sometimes). I'm getting better at planning routes by hand, though.
- Phone/SMS. Rarely, this gets used. More often, I'm calling ahead somewhere to see if they have what I need.
- DJI Go 4. This loads local map tiles over cell data, and I'm operating my drone commercially every now and then.
- Browser, for looking stuff up if I'm shopping (mostly, to see if I can find it radically cheaper elsewhere).
- Occasionally, remote monitoring of my power system and remote control of machines in my office. My office is off grid solar, and I'll opportunistically use some power out there, but if I get a cloudy afternoon, I need to shut that down remotely.
Otherwise, pretty much everything else (email, most web, various messengers, etc) can be done at home, either on wireless, or (ideally) on a laptop, because it's a lot faster.
What I've done so far:
- Uninstalled all games and distracting apps. This is an iterative process. If you're out, bored, and pull your phone out to fiddle with an app, that's a good one to delete. I've removed a bunch, including AdSense and Analytics, because it doesn't matter how many pennies my blog made today when I'm waiting in line at the store.
- Uninstalled the various Social Medias. Facebook is really bad about pestering you with notifications. Remove it. Access it through the web browser if you must.
- Removed the ability of most remaining apps to notify me of things. This includes email. I simply don't care that I got another piece of spam. I don't need the dopamine hit from that either.
- Logged myself out of websites in the browser. No, I don't need to check Reddit on the go.
Then, I set about mucking about in settings to remove even more temptations on the go.
- Turn off cell data for most apps that you don't need cell data on. Email, some of the browsers, various messenger apps that aren't critical to mobile operations.
- Make very good use of the "do not disturb" modes, though I need to fine tune this. It tends to swallow Hangouts messages that I should pay attention to (usually things like, "Hey, while you're out, can you pick this up?").
Finally, I've been experimenting with a particularly interesting option lately: Greyscale phones! If you go into the accessibility/color settings, you can configure a phone to only display greyscale. It's... really interesting, actually. You still get just about all the functionality (Google Maps traffic isn't readable, but I don't live somewhere that matters), and it's super boring to look at. I currently have this tied to the accessibility shortcut of triple tapping home, so I can toggle it if needed. But, wow. Huge difference.
And I've started charging my phone in the other room. I started this a month or so ago, and it's been very nice. Zero temptation to just check my phone at 3AM.
So... join me! Make your phone boring. Free up your time! And get epic battery life in the process (actually, half of this started because my battery is totally shot and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet).