Over the years, I’ve come to realise that the way I interact with my technology correlates to my stress level of the moment. This is the reason I decided to create this post on simplifying your technological environment.
Social Media
The first category I will tackle is Social Media. I know, it is kind of mean to ask you to look at how much time you spend on there each week, my number is 2h 08 minutes, what’s yours? In all seriousness though, I explain a bit more further down.
Social Media Usage:
I consider 2h of weekly usage to be reasonable. Seeing this laid out still makes me reflect, and I will be more conscious of the amount of time I allow myself to look at apple leaks, and scrolling through Snapchat.
TIP: I invite you to take a look at your weekly phone usage, you can also see the total time you spent on your phone for the week. You might have a shock when you see a 20 hours a week on TikTok or more! It did it to me a few months ago, I deleted the app straight! To access your report go to Settings → Screen Time → See all Activity, and if you want to see a full week like me: → swipe left on the graph.
See also: How to break iPhone addiction and check your phone less
Where is my social media buried in my iPhone?
The Untidied Folder where all my (non-daily) apps reside
Well, as the saying states: “out of sight out of mind”, so my social media apps are untidied in a folder with all the other apps I do not use on a daily basis. In this way, it is quite painful for me to find them. I ultimately use Spotlight to launch apps, which gives me the time to think twice before clicking mindlessly the button. (to access spotlight: simply swipe down from the home screen on your iPhone).
Advices on reducing Social Media / Netflix, Apple TV+ … / YouTube consumption
If you are not interested in reducing your iPhone screen time, skip this part, the following one continues on the subject of creating very useful shortcuts with the Control Centre.
Well, sometimes it’s challenging to stop a bad habit and we need some help. I needed help! A few years back, Apple added a feature that allows you to limit the time you spend on certain apps. It’s called app limits (Works for your mac and iPad too if you need to block apps). The way it works is: You decide how much you want to use a certain app/category of apps each day, and the apps will become unavailable on their own after the allocated time. You can allow yourself 15 minutes more / unblock for the day if you want to, but that is not the goal. I used it to use YouTube less 1 or 2 years ago, and it worked well! If you have a social media addiction I recommend it. How to set it uphead over to Settings → Screen Time → App Limits → Add Limit.It will then ask you for a specific app or category how much you want to allow yourself each day and more.
Useful Shortcuts and Tips to improve your experience
Now that you are breaking your iPhone addiction, let’s learn some handy shortcuts and automation for your iPhone.
Control Center
Control Centre is a relatively unused feature of the iPhone for most people and it doesn’t make any sense to me. I have customized my control center to only have what I need. While most are up to personal preference, there are two icons that I think you could benefit from greatly:
- The low battery icon: while when you have left your iphone asks whether want to activate mode sometimes go out and know that be short on battery. you: swipe up tap the power button now in clear welcome.
- The dark Mode Icon: While this one is not obligatory, I found my eyes straining when looking at iPhone screen in the dark. I find dark modes to help a bit (not a 100% change) but still better. If you sometimes forget like I do, you can set dark mode to turn on automatically by following these steps: Head over to Settings → Display & Brightness → Automatic (make it green) → Options → Light until sunset.
A word on Night Shift
It has been a trend and a belief that blue light negatively affects your sleep. The good news is that, there is a cool little known feature that allows you to reduce the blue light of your iPhone at night. I do use it and have it set up in the following way.
To activate it, simply follow these steps: Head over to Settings → Display & Brightness → Night Shift → Sunset to Sunrise.
Re-gain Power over your mornings and nights: Use Down Time
I naturally don’t tend to reach to social media or my iPhone in general in the morning or at night. Although, it would be a lie to say I have never done so. There are unfortunately quite a lot of consequences in depending so much on your iPhone. What you see, read, hear first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night does affect your night’s quality, but also the quality of your day and your general mood. Do you want to give that much power to your iPhone? I don’t! Fortunately, your iPhone can help you use it less, YES, you understand correctly, the Cupertino based brand helps you use the very product they make most of their money from, less. So why not use it to our advantage? Downtime is a set time from which most of your apps (but the one defined as always available) are greyed out and require you to click a button to say you want to use an app.
If you’re interested in trying it out, simply follow these steps: Head over to Settings → Screen Time → DownTime → Choose the time for each day.
I have it set up from 9 pm to 8:00 am every weekday, which represents an hour before my bedtime and an hour after my wake up time. The weekends, from 9 pm to 9:30 am. While I tend to go to bed later, it allows me to spend a bit more time, reading or doing something else like writing these articles.
Night Mode:
The last handy feature that I will talk about in this article: Night Mode. It allows you to mute all notifications at night, preventing anybody from disturbing your sleep. It also prevents calls (while still allowing repeated calls in case of emergency!).
To activate Night Mode on your iPhone, simply follow these steps: Head over to Settings → Do Not Disturb → Schedules → I add the same times as for my Down Time.
Tip: if you find reaching for your iPhone first thing in the morning, try and charge it at the opposite end of your room. It will also help you with waking up in the morning!!
As you might have discovered, I love technology. Although, I find it important to keep control over how we use it, and not let our technology decide the way our days go. Because at the end of the day, your favorite app makes a profit out of the time you give it. But for most people, the opposite is not true.
I hope you enjoyed this article and learned on how to use your iPhone for more productivity and less stress.
See also:
Amazing Trick to Unlock Real Productivity on your iPhone